Crime: Be careful with statistics and illustrations

On September 13, 2006, "Komsomolskaya Pravda" published excerpts from the transcript of a round table on the topic "Why Muscovites do not like visitors", which was attended by Sociologist Lev Gudkov (LEVADA-Center"), political scientist Alexander Tsipko (Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences), psychiatrist Mikhail Vinogradov , political scientist Vakhtang Dzhanashiya, lawyer Viktor Gladkikh (Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia).

Without going into details of the discussion, we note the presentation of the material. The publication is accompanied by two illustrations. The first is a photograph of an Asian janitor ( "Did you mow all the grass in Moscow, why didn't I please you?" ), the second is a diagram "Citizens of which CIS countries commit the most crimes in the capital." This diagram illustrates the speech at the round table by the representative of the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia Viktor Gladkikh. V. Gladkikh himself emphasizes that this is not all, but only about a quarter of all those prosecuted for crimes committed ( "Among the persons prosecuted, visitors make up 46.2%! Half of them are our near abroad" ). But the diagram given by the editors does not show the proportion of "foreign" crime.

In our opinion, this is a typical case of journalistic negligence, which leads to a direct distortion of the meaning of the publication. Not without reason, the first response to this publication was an indignant letter with the following content: "I read your" round table "... and was surprised: is it really only Ukrainians and Caucasians who commit crimes in Moscow? And Muscovites themselves? And visitors from other Russian cities? you fight against xenophobia is working!" - it is quite obvious that it was the illustration, and not the text, that influenced the reader's perception.

Note that in response to this question, the full statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow were published (albeit with an incomprehensible mention of the "indigenous population" ):

* "54% of the people who committed crimes in the capital are Muscovites. They account for 84% of the crimes registered in Moscow and solved (172 thousand crimes).

And the share of visitors (both Russians, and migrants from other countries, and the homeless (probably meaning stateless persons - ed. ) - 16% (this is about 34 thousand crimes) "*.

Sources

• Zhukovskaya Julia. Why Muscovites do not like visitors? // TVNZ. 2006. 13 September.
• She is. First response // There.