The COVID-19 Data Forum, a joint project of the Stanford Data Science Institute and the R Consortium, is an ongoing series of multidisciplinary webinars where topic experts discuss data-related aspects of the scientific response to the pandemic. The most recent event, held on March 18, 2021, explored the role of data journalism in the pandemic. This was a bit of a departure from previous forum events1 because it focused on issues relating to using and interpreting COVID-19 data, and not on the particular kinds of COVID-19 related …