8:00pm-9:00pm on Tuesday 26 March
Times shown are in GMT (UTC +0) up to the 26th March. For events on or after 27th March times are in BST (UTC +1).
Cambridge Union Society, 9A Bridge Street, CB2 1UB
Kamal Ahmed, former BBC Economics editor and editor-in-chief of the News Movement, is in conversation with the University of Cambridge's Professor David Spiegelhalter and award-winning journalist Marianna Spring, about the manipulation of statistics in an era of misinformation and how we can all be better at spotting false narratives.
Dorothy Byrne, President of Murray Edwards College, will chair.
*This event will be live streamed via the Cambridge Festival YouTube channel. Booking is only required if you plan to attend in-person. You can set a reminder here for when we go live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6749JL-gGw*
Kamal Ahmed is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of The News Movement, a new media business focused on social media channels, new audiences and digital consumption. Between 2018 and 2021, Kamal was Editorial Director of BBC News, working across news strategy, daily news and planning, commissioning, analysis, visual and audio journalism and new forms of digital content. Between 2016 and 2018 Kamal was Economics Editor at BBC News, leading economics coverage for the corporation. His first book, The Life and Times of a Very British Man, was published in 2018.
Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter is Emeritus Professor of Statistics in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He was previously Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, which aimed to improve the way that statistical evidence is used by health professionals, patients, lawyers and judges, media and policy-makers. He has presented the BBC4 documentaries “Tails you Win: the Science of Chance” and the award-winning “Climate Change by Numbers”. His bestselling book, The Art of Statistics, was published in March 2019, and Covid by Numbers came out in September 2021. His career highlights include appearing on Desert Island Discs in 2022, and in 2011 coming 7th in an episode of BBC1’s Winter Wipeout.
Marianna Spring is the BBC's first disinformation and social media correspondent and an award-winning journalist. She presents podcasts and documentaries investigating disinformation and social media for BBC Radio 4 podcasts, as well as for BBC Panorama and BBC Three. She is also one of the presenters of the BBC's Americast podcast. In 2022, she was named the British Press Guild's Audio Presenter of the year and Royal Television Society Innovation winner.
