In the past decade, numerous public and private institutions, NGOs, or think tanks working on war-related dynamics have developed databases putting conflict trends into numbers. While their audience goes from interested citizens to politicians and decision-makers, most of these organizations claim to provide journalists with accurate and reliable data. To what extent do media professionals actually use armed conflict databases (ACD) when reporting in war zones? Drawing on a quantitative analysis of 20 French and British newspapers and 17 interviews conducted with British and French journalists, this study finds that war reporters very seldomly refer to ACD. The study then explores the impact of four variables on journalists’ ability to use figures in their articles: acculturation to numbers, training, journalist's lack of confidence in data reliability in war contexts, and the space and time factors inherent in the construction of a journalistic article.