Ciaran thinks that some numbers are more interesting than others, and that some
visualisations of information can work counter to conventional news values: "quite
often when you visualise [data for a story], [the visualisation] goes against the story …
a 2 per cent increase or a 5 per cent increase … you show it and it looks incremental"
(Hughes, interview, 27 July 2012). Sometimes the numbers do not look particularly
newsworthy, but by plotting data over a longer timeframe, or by bring in another vari-
able, a news story may emerge. Sometimes Ciaran works backwards (chronologically)
from the numbers he is given, and finds stories to report on that are often political in
nature (challenging the claims made by politicians). These are often published on the
Fact Check blog: http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/ (accessed August 2013).