{"id":4231,"date":"2018-02-22T10:48:08","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T10:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arielsheen.com\/?p=4231"},"modified":"2018-03-07T09:08:58","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T09:08:58","slug":"telesur-english-misleading-useless-and-ugly-infographics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/2018\/02\/22\/telesur-english-misleading-useless-and-ugly-infographics\/","title":{"rendered":"TeleSUR English: Lying, Misleading, Useless and Ugly Infographics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortly after starting at my last medium size marketing agency job I had the pleasure of hearing Alberto Cairo<\/a>\u00a0give a presentation on Infographics. He helped take what then was a passing interest in infographics into a full-blown passion.<\/p>\n

After the talk, I immediately bought and read his books The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization<\/a>\u00a0and The Truthful Art: Data, Charts, and Maps for Communication<\/a>. Both were incredibly well written, profoundly insightful, filled with useful examples and case studies of what to do and what not to do and generally helped instill in me a passion for visualizing data.<\/p>\n

My appetite not yet whetted,\u00a0I then bought and studied the 2013<\/a>, 2014<\/a>, 2015<\/a> and 2016<\/a> volumes of The Best American Infographics and signed up to mailers like Information is Beautiful<\/a> and started reading.<\/p>\n

Why the fascination? Simply put, infographics and other means for visualizing data are incredibly useful means for organizing and presenting information that otherwise takes many paragraphs or pages.<\/p>\n

Well. Better put, they can<\/em> be.<\/p>\n

After all, all Bugatti Chiron’s are cars, but not all cars are Bugatti Chirons.<\/p>\n

When it comes to TeleSUR English’s Infographics<\/a> not only do they lack any Bugattis in the line up of work they’ve produced, but most of their infographics are better classified as jalopies, scrap metal, or cardboard boxes.<\/p>\n

Lest it appear that I’m overly harsh, I’ll review a few examples of the many<\/em> infographics that have major<\/em> issues in truthfulness and aesthetics.<\/p>\n

TeleSUR English Infographic with Incorrect Information<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/h5>\n

This infographic, a term I clearly use loosely here because it’s really just a visual news release poorly conceived and executed, amuses me for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n

I took a screenshot of this “infographic” to point out how several people that viewed it believed it to be the incorrect date listed on there and thus felt that it reduced their credibility as a news organization.<\/p>\n

In TeleSUR English’s defense, this is an understandable mistake.<\/p>\n

I’ve worked with enough graphic designers from Latin America to know that this is a typical error when producing based on designs for an American audience.<\/p>\n

Similar errors include applying metric measurements, using comma’s instead of periods to indicate decimals and writing “Jaja” instead of “Haha”.<\/p>\n

What’s makes this doubly funny is that even then, the date is still wrong.<\/p>\n

You can check this on Reuters<\/a> as well as Greg Wilpert’s Venezuela Analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In addition to these issues, you’ll notice after every period in the list that there is a hyphen.<\/p>\n

1. –
\n2.-
\n3. –<\/p>\n

Why? A full stop<\/a>\u00a0has been indicated, so there’s no need for a dash. It’s distracting and unnecessary.<\/p>\n

In the places where the copy is gramatically correct, which is few and far between, the word choice doesn’t make sense. The writer of the copy clearly had English as a second language, which is fine, but the editor that approved publication should have checked it first.<\/p>\n

TeleSUR English Infographic with Incorrect Information Part II<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/h5>\n

4 +10 +8 +12+ 26 +12+50= 122, not 185.<\/p>\n

TeleSUR English’s Infographic is incorrect, though their source – Global Witness<\/a> – is not only clear that this number is worldwide, but they also present the data in a far superior manner.<\/p>\n

Clicking on the link above or exploring the map below demonstrated far superior means for displaying that data that does not lose credibility because they can’t do simple math.<\/p>\n


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