The Tisha Thompson Rule: Explain the Data in One Sentence
Program Date: Jan. 13, 2022

5 takeaways:

Breaking news will always benefit from data. Tisha Thompson, an investigative and enterprise reporter for ESPN, said that even after 20 years as a broadcast reporter, the power of data never escapes her. I come primarily from local television and I did my very first data-based story on unsafe bridges when I was brand new in my first TV job in Paducah, Kentucky,” Thompson said. “I made a list of five bridges that the state had deemed to be the most structurally problematic. And it will not shock you that parts of those bridges fell down. What does surprise me is that when that happened, people remembered me by name as being the first person to ever warn them that that bridges they were going over would fall down one day.”

Before you publish, show your story to someone who knows nothing about data. Thompson suggested asking them to look at it and then explain to you what it says. “Because if they can’t regurgitate to you what the whole point of the story was, and they’re getting confused or they’re losing sight of what you’re there for, you need to refocus,” she said. “And if they don’t understand your pie chart or whatever because it’s so cool and it’s so creative, but your 75-year-old relative can’t figure it out, it’s not working.”

Television or radio stories get one sentence to explain the data. “The human brain cannot absorb more than one big chunk of numbers, it just can’t handle it,” Thompson said. “People get confused, they stop listening, they tune out and now you’ve missed your moment. If you cannot consolidate all that work you did down to a single number or a single statistic, you need to ask yourself what are you doing? This is ‘Tisha Thompson Rules,” you can break them. I’ve broken them, but I’ve come to regret it.”

People love to get angry about corruption. “So how do you get people angry? And that’s the question you ask yourself, where’s the outrage?” Thompson said. “If you can’t come up with what the outrage is, then why are you doing the story?”

Nifty graphics often measure real pain. Tell the audience about those humans. Thompson’s grandfather died 25 years ago after falling and hitting his head. He bled to death after a stroke, and doctors couldn’t control the bleeding because he was on too much blood thinner, Thompson said. “I’ve always known those details, what I didn’t know is he was on a medical trial. So 25 years later, I come to realize that my grandfather is that rare but possible side effect that you hear about when you watch those TV commercials. He was the only one. He was the only death.” Data can be very impersonal, so journalists need to ask themselves why they’re doing the story? Who’s getting hurt? What’s the point? Where’s the humanity in it?


Speaker: 

Tisha Thompson, Investigative and Enterprise Reporter, ESPN


This program was funded by the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation. NPF is solely responsible for the content.

Tisha Thompson
Investigative and Enterprise Reporter, ESPN
1
Transcript
The Human Beings Behind the Numbers
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