Author Archives: nataliebleal

When reporting on data remember that those who don’t count aren’t counted

Invisible man

Invisible man image by Brian

In a guest post for OJB, Help Me Investigate contributor Natalie Leal talks about how statistics on benefit claimants, migrants and A&E admissions reflect organisations’ priorities – and can be skewed as a result.

I recently witnessed an unemployed woman at a job centre shouting that she would “never ever” set foot in there again.

The woman, who had just been told that her benefits would be cut off for thirteen weeks, stormed past two security guards on her way out.

They turned to each other and joked:

“That’s another one off the books.”

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Protecting whistleblowers, anonymity – and Daniel Ellsberg. Day 2 of the Logan Symposium

In a guest post for the Online Journalism Blog, Natalie Leal reports on Day 2 of the Logan Symposium on secrecy, surveillance and censorship. You can find a post about Day 1 here.

The surprise of the Logan Symposium‘s second day was the appearance of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked those documents in 1971. “Secrets are not kept so much by technical means but by people,” he said. Continue reading