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The dumbing down of data -Vikas Kumar

-The Hoot

The media coverage of the Census data on religion focused on the timing of its release and the politically controversial aspects. Many deeper and more complex layers were totally ignored.

VIKAS KUMAR analyses the coverage in painstaking detail to see why journalists handledthe data so superficially

Census data on religion collected in February-March 2011 was belatedly released on August 25, 2015. This analysis of how the media covered the release and presented the data will first give an overview of the coverage in five English dailies and then look at the shortcomings.

Our governments spend enormous amounts – Rs 2,200 crores on the 2011 Census – to collect data that they are reluctant to release, let alone use. A comparison of five English dailies published from Bangalore – The Hindu, Deccan Herald (DH), and The Times of India (TOI) –and New Delhi – Hindustan Times (HT) and The Indian Express (TIE) –suggests that the religion data did not receive sufficient coverage in the print media. This is surprising as census data is released once in a decade and we have a long history of politically-motivated use of community-level statistics. The Census seems to have been crowded out by Indrani Bora and Hardik Patel. We will first compare the coverage – front page, other pages/supplements, opinion pieces, and editorials – of the latest census data in different newspapers before discussing their shared shortcomings.

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