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Monday 24 September 2007

SWAZI JOURNALISTS CAN’T ADD UP

A row over the murder rate in Swaziland has exposed shortcomings in Swazi journalism – and also in the Swazi Government.

S’gayoyo Magongo, the Minister of Public Service and Information, publicly attacked overseas’ journalists at a press conference on Thursday about the number of murders that are committed in Swaziland.

The internationally respected Economist group of magazines had published statistics in its publication Pocket World in Figures that said Swaziland had the second highest number of murders in the whole world.

The Economist report was picked up by the Times Sunday and this is what brought it to the Minister’s attention. The Economist had reported that there were 13.6 murders per 100,000 head of population in Swaziland.

On Friday (21 September 2007) both the Swazi Observer and the Times of Swaziland reported S’gayoyo ‘slamming’ and ‘rubbishing’ the report. S’gayoyo said that the Economist got it wrong.

S’gayoyo scoffed at a press conference that this would mean that something like 155,856 Swazis would have been murdered in a year, an incredible figure considering that there are only 1.1 million people living in the whole of Swaziland.

The figures would be alarming indeed, if that is what the Economist said. In fact the Economist said there were 13.6 murders per 100,000 people in Swaziland. When you extend that ratio to the whole 1.1 million Swaziland population the total number of murders comes to about 150 a year. This figure is roughly the same number of murders that have been reported by the Royal Swazi Police in its annual reports, demonstrating that the Economist got it about right.

The Times Sunday got the figures wrong. And so did S’gayoyo. He told the press conference that ‘the Government’ had checked the original source of the information (so we must assume that ‘the Government’ – whoever that is – made the same mistake as the Times Sunday journalist).

What they both did was to read 13.6 per 100,000 as 13.6 per cent of 100,000. This enabled them to arrive at the figure of 155,856. The mistake should be obvious. Trying to calculate the murder rate in the whole 1.1 million population as 13.6 per cent of 100,000 simply makes no sense.

So the minister made a basic statistical error. But how come both the Times and the Observer didn’t point out the mistake to him, but instead printed it?

There are two parts to the answer, I think. The first is that S’gayoyo is a minister and journalists in Swaziland don’t, as a habit, correct ministers (even when, as in this case, he was so clearly wrong). The second part to the answer is that the Times and Observer journalists themselves probably didn’t understand the statistic either. You only need to read the business pages of both the daily newspapers to see reports written in such a way that it is clear that the journalists don’t understand figures.

S’gayoyo’s error is embarrassing for him, because he told the press conference that ‘the Government’ had checked the original report on the Internet, so the misinterpretation of the Economist report must be seen as his own responsibility.

He then used the Economist ‘error’ as an excuse to attack the international media for misreporting Swaziland.

The Times reported S’gayoyo saying, ‘On behalf of the Government of the Kingdom of Swaziland, the Ministry of Public Services and Information wishes to caution about the ramifications of one-sided, biased and non-factual journalistic practices.'

He went on, ‘Inaccurate, one-sided, negative reports give an unattractive perception of the country and may fan away foreign direct investment and tourism.’

The original mistake was obvious to people outside of Swazi journalism and Swazi government and it was quickly spotted and yesterday (23 September 2007) the Times Sunday fell over itself to correct the mistake.

So to recap: the Times Sunday journalists, the Minister of Public Service and Information and ‘the Government’ all failed their stats exam. And as for the reporting of the Economist’s role in all this, it wasn’t the international journalists who were ‘inaccurate’ and ‘one-sided’ and ‘non-factual’. It was the Times Sunday and Minister S’gayoyo himself.

So, one small lack of understanding of a statistic has exposed failings in Swazi journalism, the Swazi ‘Government’ and the Minister of Public Service and Information. Not bad for one morning’s work.

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