LIES, DAMNED LIES.....AND STATISTICS

26 Sep 1994

        Yesterday's TV Watch was quite an enjoyable read. Thank 
you. 
        You were right on the mark in chiding SBC for being 
superficial in its coverage and for excluding relevant statistics 
(pertaining to its public service broadcasting duty). I would like to share 
with you some of my observations regarding the Straits Times' less-
than-satisfactory reporting of statistics. If you would direct them to the 
journalists responsible, I would be most grateful.
        The first case is also the lesser. In yesterday's Sunday Times, it 
was reported that port workers will get a $4.8m-a-year increase in pay. 
It struck me that the figure reported, $4.8m, was particularly useless. 
This is because the report (inexplicably?) failed to state how many 
workers would share in the pay increase. Looking in the 1990 Census, I 
discovered that the number of workers involved in Water Transport was 
27,000. After excluding managerial and professional staff, it was around 
24,000. Let us assume a figure of 20,000 for those who will share in the 
$4.8m. That works out to a pay increase per worker per month of only 
$20. Twenty lousy bucks for working an extra 10 hours per month 
(39.8h to 42.3h per week)? Suddenly, the $4.8m did not look so 
generous after all. Do our unions protect the interests of the workers, or 
what? Maybe the journalist who wrote that piece, not to mention the 
editors who passed it, should take a course in how to report statistics 
meaningfully. (My figure of 20,000 may be incorrect, but that is not the 
point of this paragraph).
        The second case is much more serious. Until June this year, 
whenever the Straits Times reported a drug-trafficking-related hanging, 
it routinely reported how many people had been hanged since the Act 
was passed in 1975 and how many in the current year alone. 
Subsequently, the reports only mentioned how many people had been 
hanged to date. In the latest report, regarding the Dutchman van 
Damme, neither statistic was reported.
        Why do I think this omission is important? Well, to date, 73 
persons had been hanged. Looking at this figure, spread over 19 years, 
there no sense of the complete failure of the death penalty in deterring 
drug trafficking. I say failure, because, in this year alone, thirty-one 
persons have been hanged! So much for the deterrent effect, huh?
        They say that information is power. But power really resides in 
the control of information. Outright lies are hardly necessary when a 
compliant press (what kind of political controls do you  work under?) 
reports useless statistics in a way that creates false impressions (in the 
first case, of corporate generosity), or when the same press fails to 
publish statistics that call into question the effectiveness of an official 
policy.
        Surely it is not too difficult to ask the union officials what the 
pay increase per worker is? Surely it is strange that a standard report 
format should gradually be changed so that important, but 
embarrassing, facts are omitted?
        To be fair, the Straits Times rarely pretends to be an 
independent force. It prides itself as a force for maintaining social 
consensus. But what is the value of a social consensus built upon 
ignorance? Such a consensus is built on sand, not rock. It is a farce.
        I hope that the slip-ups over statistics are just that, slip-ups, 
and nothing more. If so, would the journalists who were responsible for 
them please buck up? And if they are not, then I think that your 
criticism of SBC is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.
        Thank you.