STATISTICS and communication experts have urged mass media practitioners in Nigeria to use data-driven tools in the discharge of their professional and constitutional responsibilities to achieve effective and developmental changes in the society.

This was major resolution at a two-day capacity-building workshop on Data-Driven Reporting organised by United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), Nigeria B Field Office, Lagos in collaboration with the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) for 20 journalists at Peninsular Resort, Ajah, Lagos recently.

Facilitators at the workshop were the General Manager of Metro FM of FRCN, Mrs. Ndidi Osaka; Communication Officer of UNICEF, Blessing Ejiofor; Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (PMF) specialist, UNICEF, Bauchi, Dr. Danjuma Almustafa; and Dr. Ayo Oyebode of Communications and Language Arts, University of Ibadan (UI).

According to the facilitators, journalists must make research findings newsy by turning hard data into stories that would interest the readers and listeners through commonly understood language to achieve the required impact.

At the workshop that included theories and practical on evidence-based reporting, the experts also agreed that while journalists are not permitted to input their own opinions and recommendations on data in news stories, they may contact experts to make recommendations on possible implications on the issue under consideration.

Specifically, Osaka and Ejiofor set the tone of the workshop as they took participants on what to expect during the workshop, urging them to be attentive and participate effectively to achieve the objectives of the workshop.

Also, Ejiofor highlighted various programmes of UNICEF globally and in Nigeria to promote and fight the cause of children.

However, Almustafa, who spoke on Data Analysis and Its Relevance To Reporting Development; Key Concepts and Methodologies in Data Collection; Data Analysis and Presentations; Telling the Story from Data and the UNICEF’s Role, asserted that good quality and quantitative primary data are usually important and relevant for better evidence-based reporting when compare to others.

He stated that generally, data are important because they enable an objective appreciation of the status of the variable under observation, permit comparisons to be made between similar variables in similar or different situations, revealing lessons to be learnt, affords reasonable predictions of likely status of variable in the near future and a fundamental requirement for planning and tracking development.

But on the relevance of common statistical tools to reporting, he said, they guarantee true knowledge, which enriches a report; enable objectivity; facilitate comparisons and reasonable predictions; lessons learnt and conclusions based on sound data can be used to proffer recommendations and form a sound basis for advocacy, fund raising/sustenance for development activities.

He tasked media practitioners to ascertain the true quality of a data before use. Almustafa also counselled journalists to jettison questionable or doubtful data to avoid trouble.

He said apart from capacity-building for its stakeholders, UNICEF does not collect data, adding that it was wrong to attribute the results of data to UNICEF.

Almustafa said that UNICEF use its monitoring and evaluation (M&E) section to support and supervise in-house sections, government agencies like National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), non-governmental organisations and civil society groups to monitor and evaluate development activities.

He said the global children body also engaged in advocacy for establishment of structures for M&E in collaborating with partnership institutions, support funding and coordinate surveys, disseminate and encourage the use of data for planning and tracking of results.

On his part, Ojebode described data-driven reporting as the process of making research findings accessible to the public physically, contextually and linguistically.

Quoting scholars, he said the goal of data driven reporting is to humanise the statistics.

“It is journalism in its true essence; uncovering and mining through information the public do not have enough time to do themselves, interrogating it, and making sense of it before sharing it with the audience,” Ojebode quoted Westbrook, a scholar, as saying.

The university don, who dwelled on the theme, Turning Data into News Stories, said journalists do not use data because of phobia for numbers, lack of adequate skills to humanise data, lack of easy availability of data and because data-driven stories do not make ready hard news easily.

After taken the participants through the techniques of turning data into readable and interesting stories, he, however, concluded: “Data-driven story writing is a lot of work. Data-driven story writing is also moral and social responsibility…a must…”