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Published on 10/05/1998 All articles from this issue

Numbers don't tell enough of the story about businesses

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By David L. Grey

Media Watch

Town Crier Weekly Stock Index. "Forty-six companies whose executives live in Los Altos and LAH." See Page -.

Hmm. But as with typical business news coverage, especially recently, trying to stay atop the roller coaster markets, maybe not much more than that "Hmm" - meaning only perhaps interesting.

It does not seem to matter whether the news report is of the "46," "daily 60," "Silicon Valley 150" or some radio-TV Bay Area business half-minute. Stocks lumped together by geography offer limited market insight. They are mostly designed for reader-listener-viewer convenience based on one logical news packaging axiom: Local is as local does.

Just do not expect such narrowed tables or listings and graphs to make much sense, to translate the bigger messages or even to draw up more than sketches about market patterns.

One problem is that business statistics, like most of society's by-the-numbers obsessions, only describe. To become enlightening, such collections must be put in context and well connected over time, based on as valid comparisons as possible.

That is what extended stock tables, of course, are intended to convey; but even these may be superficial or overvalued. And similar pitfalls are seen throughout baseball box scores or football standings and in such as TV ratings and public opinion polls. Stats can be painful reminders that naked numbers do not equal "news."

Intensifying this problem is the irony that journalists strive to fill in between the lines with quotes from experts. These are fine in intent but may mislead when over-presented as causes/becauses rather than as more likely partial explanations and maybes.

Many times, for instance, there can be myriad factors for stock market prices and behaviors on any one day or in any arbitrarily designated time period. The 10-second broadcast lead-in or 45-word headline typically tightens the whys down to a couple and even then those selected may not at all be the major market players.

So such habits expose even more troubling weaknesses in so many news media, especially today: oversimplifications compounded by the lures of trying to sound authoritative - by singling out a few "firm reasons" when foundations may be mushy to mega-complex.

This is the escalating era of time-driven sound bytes and space-compacted phrasing eg: this column's maximum (=) 500+ words. Thoughtful pauses, maybes, doubts and "ahs" in news commonly are edited out. Just listen to, watch and peruse most stock reports.

Press folk have become preoccupied with trying to sound, appear and read as confident and efficient - a bit akin to sitcoms, and some ads, punchy one-liners and comebacks, timed even with perfected pauses and facial expressions. A possible outcome: Credibility sought through style over substance leaves reality subject to distortion by distraction.

Such can be OK as entertainment but not as "true news." Life is seldom yes-no, black-white, crisp and clear and those over-relying on so-called definitive market stats are kidding themselves and missing out in the searches for deeper understandings?

Numbers in the news business do not necessarily lie; they just do not tell enough of the story about our businesses in the news.