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Part of
Manufacturing Dissent: Manipulation and counter-manipulation in times of crisis
Edited by Cornelia Ilie
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 339] 2024
► pp. 186–214

Chapter 6
How can governments be prevented from manipulating statistics about Covid-19?

An example from UK politics

| The University of Edinburgh
| Loughborough University

This chapter is part of a project examining how politicians manipulate statistics and how they can be institutionally countered. We rhetorically analyse how the Chair of the United Kingdom Statistics Authority countered the Minister of Health who was manipulating the statistics for Covid-19 testing. The Chair wrote two public letters to the Minister. The first was diplomatically phrased. When this letter failed to achieve its purpose, the Chair wrote a more directly critical letter, which was effective. We analyse the letters and how they were reported in the UK national press. The diplomatic letter was virtually ignored, but the second letter was widely reported, with newspapers framing the story as a respected independent ‘watchdog’ censuring a minister for misusing statistics.

Keywords: opposing manipulation, Covid-19 statistics, press reporting manipulation, diplomatic and undiplomatic language
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Manipulating statistics
  • 3.The exchange of letters
  • 4.Press coverage of Norgrove’s first letter
  • 5.Norgrove’s second letter
  • 6.Newspaper coverage of Norgrove’s second letter
  • 7.Norgrove recruiting the press
  • 8.Absences in presenting Norgrove and his words
  • 9.Concluding comments
  • References
Published online: 17 January 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.339.06mar
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