Data Journalist and Illustrator Mona Chalabi on Culture and Current Events
* The contemporary field of data journalism often feels like an accidental study in compromise. To scan the headlines is to understand that while the qualitative elements of life are in steep decline, at least we know the exact quantities of that decline. Pundits and journalists repeat the same messages: everything is bad, so let’s focus our attention on counting and sorting all those bad things. Chalabi, with a skepticism well-suited to her chosen line of work, sees things differently. “People forget that journalists are as distrusted as politicians,” she says, a result of opaque methodologies and undeclared biases. Other prominent data journalists will often claim to know the truth of the situation to a decimal point, but Chalabi thinks such conviction can only be a self-serving lie. “It makes them people in the know, people who possess an objective truth that we have to go to them or that we can only aspire to.” For herself, she wants to offer a new way of showing rather than telling. Her work is an ongoing attempt to find the best display for the curious waves that ripple through our worlds. In everything she does, Chalabi is looking close, and asking people to do the same. So much of her work is about distance—the way we can become isolated from each other and even ourselves if we don’t see what is happening right in front of our faces. …
*Excerpt via SSENSE, interview by Haley Mlotek, photography by Heather Sten
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