How to manipulate the news

Just the facts, people.

I hardly every go on Facebook anymore. I haven’t since the pandemic. It was frustrating how much fake news was going around. And it was even more frustrating that people were (still are) drawing conclusions, and passing on conclusions, based on headlines alone. You know how news articles are shared and reshared, but none of the sharers read the full story that the shared headline points to, and still manage to have some indignant opinion? I can write a 5,000-word essay on everything that’s wrong with this practice but, out of the blue, came the opportunity to illustrate it instead.

That’s a screenshot from Google news home page on Friday, March 8, 2024 at 3:23 p.m. Those headlines lead to stories about the same subject — the unemployment rate in the Philippines in January, 2024.

But why does one say the rate is down by 4.5% while two others say it’s 4.5% up?

A fourth headline says rise to 2.15 million in January 2024.

At the outset, it’s easy to conclude that among the stories these headlines lead to are downright lies. But I read all four stories in full and none of them were lies. All of them, however, illustrate how to manipulate the news. The goal, of course, is to make people draw conclusions based on perception rather than hard facts.

Pna.gov.ph

The publisher of the news headlined Unemployment rate down to 4.5% in January, is operated by the Philippine News Agency (PNA), the Philippine government’s official web-based newswire service.

The 4.5% was calculated by comparing data from January 2024 and January 2023. It was 4.8% in the same period last year so unemployment is indeed “down” to 4.5%.

So easy to say that a government owned website cannot paint the current administration in a not so flattering light, right? So, using a formula that suggests progress rather than regress, it comes up with a story that the unemployment rate is indeed down to 4.5%.

Know what? It is the logical formula. By comparing data from the same dates over several years, you get historical data. You get a pattern which can give a better picture of whether unemployment has been going down steadily or whether the drop is more of a fluke. I wish the article had mentioned data prior to 2023, but it doesn’t.

Inquirer.net and Manilatimes.net

These two news sites, web versions of broadsheets, say the unemployment rate is up by 4.5% in January. How did they arrive at that figure? By comparing data from December 2023 and January 2024. It is 3.1% in December 2023 and “up” to 4.5% in January 2024.

What’s wrong with their formula? By their own admission in their stories, unemployment is low is December because a lot of extra people are hired to serve holiday shoppers. These people are employed only for the holidays. So, you have unemployment rates for two months with drastically different job demands, and you end up with stories that the unemployment rate is up by 4.5%.

Gmanetwork.com

That’s the online news portal of the GMA TV network. While the report does not mention percentages, the rise to 2.15 million jobless people in January 2024 is just a repacked version of comparing data from December 2023 to that of January 2024.

So, there

There are many different ways to tell the same story. It depends on how a publication wants its readers to feel. Hopeful? Outraged? Secure? That’s how to manipulate the news to sell stories.