Ongoing reporting of the public health catastrophe, political scandal, lawsuits, and recovery efforts marking the Flint Water Crisis demonstrate journalism’s critical role in performing its functions in a democratic society. The botched switch to the Flint River from Lake Huron exposed city residents to long-term hazardous levels of lead, dangerous bacteria, and other toxins. Officials employed fraudulent testing methods to declare the water safe, dismissed residents’ mysterious health ailments as anecdotes, and discounted “citizen scientist” data showing lead levels to exceed safety standards. Only when Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha produced incontrovertible evidence of elevated lead levels in her patients did the state publicly acknowledge a problem. At first, the struggle over data by officials and “citizen scientists” produced what Dr. Hanna-Attisha called a “loop of white noise” in the news media that confounded public understanding. This would soon change. Drawing on a 2017 focus-group interview with Michigan Radio reporters and editors covering the Crisis, this lecture considers how and why “data” became a protagonist in the story and how these journalists chose to interrupt the “loop of white noise” with sound data of a different form.