United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Statistical Division Building Relations with the Media With examples from Statistics Slovenia and Statistics Finland Training Workshop on Disseminating MDG Indicators and Statistical Information Astana, Kazakhstan, November 2009 Petteri Baer, Regional Adviser, UNECE Courtesy to Jussi Melkas, Statistics Finland

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Examples of well working media relations  Press releases Statistics Slovenia  Media relations approach, follow-up of media relations and Publication Calendar Statistics Finland  Naturally there are others Basic Publication Calendar – almost in all participating NSIs Press releases  Statistics Canada, ABS, all Scandinavian NSIs

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Why Statistics Slovenia deserves to be mentioned?  Well structured press releases Headline Ingress/Introduction Basic text Graphs and visual presentations Links to additional information Possibility to sign up to receive press releases by by sphere of interest – good categorization of the supply

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Why Statistics Slovenia deserves to be mentioned?  They follow the golden KISS rule  K eep  I t  S hort and  S imple

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Why Statistics Finland deserves to be mentioned?  Relaxed general attitude built on mutual trust with the Media  They have developed the Publication Calendar to be the backbone of their main and very modern publication activities in a very systematic way with an extensive use of XML  This dates back to a long tradition – Publication Calendars have been in use already since the 1980’ies  The present practices introduce the electronic era in real terms

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Finnish stereotype of a statistician  Produces figures on something that is not important  Too many theoretical concepts and indexes, out of touch with reality  Statistics is a special brand of history that has nothing relevant to say about the present  Says nothing or, if does, denies it in the next sentence

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Finnish stereotype of a journalist  Short memory and always in a hurry  Moving in crowds, only one thing at a time seems to be interesting  Bad news is good news  No methodological knowledge

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Instead of stereotypes...  We should understand that statistics and journalism are two useful institutions/professions which collect and process information on society and different phenomena  Statistics and journalism have different kind of theoretical foundations and culture, of which neither is false or true  Both are useful and inevitable parts of society  We should strive for co-operation and possibly synthesis

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Two Cultures  STATISTICAL OFFICE  Systematic  Condensed info  Standardising  Mathematics  Indexes, Indicators  Descriptive  Conservative, Time series oriented  MEDIA  Intuitive  Condensed (not as much)  Free-form  Humanities  Typical cases  Searching for answers  Oriented towards change, News and scoop oriented

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide The Statistical Agency needs good publicity...  for same reasons as any organisation: in order to guarantee fiscal resources in order to get good employees in order to get customers  for some reasons of its own: in order to get good data in order to be trusted - statistics has to be trusted in order to serve the public discussion with the data it can provide

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Journalism needs good statistics…  because they give a picture of short term fluctuations in society  because they offer the public facts and information for analysing social problems and structure of society  because they validate or do not validate single observations, which journalists make  because they are based on concepts and classifications which help to analyse society

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide What is the outcome/experience in Statistics Finland?  More than 50 experts are giving statements on Statistics Finland’s statistics to the media, press and TV  About 700 statistical releases and 70 press releases are published annually, and all get a fairly good publicity  special news stories published annually in the 35 largest newspapers Less than 1 % of the special news stories included criticism: politically sensitive questions (unemployment, regional development), obvious errors

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide What is the outcome/experience in Statistics Finland? ( Continued)  A survey among the Finnish journalists tell that Statistics Finland is evaluated as one of the best sources of information for them  Continuous development of customer contacts to different parts of the media

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Familiarity of Statistics Finland 1975–2007 TNS Gallup Ltd & Taloustutkimus Ltd

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Reliability of Statistics Finland’s statistics

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Statistics Finland's usefulness

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Basic principles of communicating about statistics at Statistics Finland – or anywhere...  Reliability  Timeliness  Impartiality  Clarity  Objectivity  Confidentiality  Relevance

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Proactive measures in media relations at Statistics Finland  Organise visits and education Focus on the most important groups  television, major newspapers, business periodicals  economic, science reporters Present data sources and service possibilities, tell how to read statistics, discuss also methodological difficulties Be informal  Give special service to every journalist in need of it  Build friendships but do not favour any partner

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide The effects of media operations are monitored  Systematic follow-up of media reactions Thematic classification Attitude classification  Make statistics on the feedback and analyse what should be done better in the future  Pick out stories needing immediate reaction  Compile a collection of interesting stories and distribute them in your office

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Rules of reaction to media at Statistics Finland  Be active  Don’t be aggressive  Be honest, admit you faults  Avoid taking a stand on social problems  You can react both in public and in private

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide A word of warning to statisticians:  Everything you say can be used as a story  The task of a journalist is to make a good story - nothing more

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Advice for Finnish journalists making a story on statistics  Beware: Easy conclusions are seldom right conclusions If nobody hasn’t noticed your finding before, there is probably something wrong in it Be ready to throw away your hypothesis / prejudice  Don’t be afraid: Be critical on truths, which are said to base on statistical reasoning Use your imagination when reading statistics

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Advice for Finnish journalists making a story on statistics (continued)  Ask first  The statistician surely knows the frequently made errors (FME) in reading statistics

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide The Publication System of Statistics Finland – main features(1)  Number of statistical releases annually About 700 in Finnish and Swedish 330 in English … growing  The structure of statistical releases has been carefully defined To meet the demands of multichannel distribution  All statistical releases are archived Their URL address will remain unchanged

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide The Publication System of Statistics Finland – main features(2)  Since spring 2007 the Publication System is XML based  A single three-language XML original file can be used to automatically publish HTML pages in Finnish, English and Swedish (a total of about 90 HTML files), compile a PDF publication in Finnish and English, compile a PDF file in Finnish for printing and distribute the publication via and RSS in Finnish, English and Swedish

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Earlier, before the year 2007  In the old publishing process, the data contained in a single set of statistics was published 1) as electronic statistical release in the online service; if required, annexed tables and figures and a longer article would also be published 2) as a printed publication and 3) as database tables in the table database.  All three publishing processes were separate and employed different tools in the production of tables and the publishing of data  Data in different distribution channels were not coordinated and they did not form a consistent whole

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide A qualitatively new publication process – Managing the whole  The new publishing system combines the content of statistical releases published in the online service (and the table and figure annexes supplementing them) and the content of earlier printed publications  This revision was not merely a question of routine copying of earlier data into new tools, but a complete redesigning of the publishing system as a whole

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide One XML-original --> several content combinations to different dissemination channels in three languages Publication original (XML-file ) Heading Stat. release (FIN, SWE, ENG) Caption text Short text section Contact persons Annexed images Quality description Annexed tables Description of variables Web site Printed publication PDF Fi ISSN 1a, ISBN 1a Sw ISSN 1b, ISBN 1b En ISSN 1c, ISBN 1c PDF Fi ISSN 2a, ISBN 2a Sw ISSN 2b, ISBN 2b En ISSN 2c, ISBN 2c RSS HTML Larger text section

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Technicalities  Data Architecture of the new publication system COmmon Structure of Statistical Information, COSSI Available at  The publishing tool Arbortext XML Editor

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide More detailed information  Mr Markku Huttunen’s presentation at the International Marketing and Output Database Conference, 1-5 September 2008  huttunen_.pdf  Markku Huttunen is Head of the web services division of Statistics Finland

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Helpful materials by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe  Communicating with the Media – A Guide for Statistical Organisations Geneva /documents/media/guide/  Making Data Meaningful, Part 1 – a Guide to Writing Stories about numbers Geneva /documents/writing/

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Helpful materials by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe  Making Data Meaningful, Part 2 – a Guide to Presenting Statistics Geneva /documents/writing/  Making Data Meaningful Part 1 and Part 2 are both available in English and Russian at the web site, mentioned above

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Communicating with Media – Main content  Principles, objectives and management issues in data dissemination  Organisational aspects Media services Release calendars Dissemination strategy Dealing with negative press coverage Measuring the impact  Methods and tools  Renewed edition in 2010

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Communicating with Media – Main content (Continued)  Impact of the internet on information dissemination Who is the customer? What is the product? Making a good website Measuring web performance & collecting customer feedback Organisational issues  Learning in each others classrooms What statisticians should learn What media people should learn  Handling a media crisis

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Making Data Meaningful, Part 1 – Main content  What is a statistical story?  Why tell a story?  Things to take into consideration when writing a story on statistics  How to write a story  Writing about data: Make numbers “stick”  Evaluating the impact  Applying good writing techniques  Examples of well written statistical stories  Further reading recommendations

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Making Data Meaningful, Part 2 – Main content

Petteri Baer - UNECE Statistical Division Slide Conclusion  You cannot learn to swim if you don’t go into the water!