Externalities

The bombardment of Homs will be judged by history as a massacre comparable to Rwanda or Srebrenica, says a British photographer injured in the attacks.

Paul Conroy, 47, told BBC’s Newsnight he had witnessed “a systematic slaughter of the civilian population”.

In all his experience of war zones, he had never seen anything on this level, he said, and in 10 years, the world would be “wringing its hands” in shame.

Happy weekend!

Paul Dacre is the Daily Mail’s low-profile editor. To some - including many in government - he is a malign force, using his paper to hound minorities and other vulnerable targets, and savage liberalism in any form. To others he is the most gifted journalist of his generation, a moral man with his finger on the pulse of Middle England. Andy Beckett went in search of the truth

A long but interesting read I found recently. The most worrying thing is that it’s from early 2001. The Government and the rest of the world may have changed, but is Paul Dacre any less powerful?

Every 2011 Express headline sorted by topic. There’s also a round-up for The Daily Star. Please, please kill it with fire.

bibliophylax:

The Daily Express (on Sundays, the Sunday Express) is like the Daily Mail but cheaper. In the UK newspaper market it ranks either fifth or sixth by total sales…

We all know how loaded questions can bias results – ‘Do you think Britain should allow the tinpot dictators in Brussels to tell us what to do, or defend its proud history of democracy and national independence?’ The purpose of our experiment was to ask alternative, unbiased, questions. We chose the BBC licence fee as the subject of our inquiry: do people regard it as good or bad value? We posed the question nine different ways, with nine different 2,000+ samples, in late August and September.

Some examples:

• Overall, do you think the BBC licence fee is good or bad value for money? - Net result (good minus bad): 0

•  The BBC licence fee costs £145.50 a year. Do you think this is good or bad value for money? - Net result: -27

•  The cost of the BBC licence works out at 40p a day. Do think this is good or bad value for money? - Net result: 8
  
  

In the final two experiments we first asked: Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the service provided by the BBC - its TV and radio channels and online services including the catch-up ‘IPlayer’ service? Very large majorities are satisfied. We then asked:    

•  The cost of the BBC licence works out at 40p a day. Do think this is good or bad value for money? - Net result: 25

It really does depend how much information people have to work with. Every word can influence their thinking and imagination. It may be that deliberative opinion polling is best - “where a representative group of people are selected, and taken away, perhaps for a residential weekend, and briefed in as impartial a manner as possible on subjects before being asked for their views on them.”

I’ve written some survey questions of my own on drugs policy - unbiased, of course! - and I look forward to sharing the results of those in the next month or two.

See also: How to skew polls and influence people (drugs polls)

“Guilty: Amanda Knox looks stunned as appeal against murder conviction is rejected”

It is unsurprising, perhaps, that a media outlet would prepare two versions of a story where the result was expected but unknown. Unfortunately for the Mail’s website, they posted the wrong one. A cock-up, then. But half way through the article, there’s this:

As Knox realized the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears. […]

Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that ‘justice had been done’ although they said on a ‘human factor it was sad two people would be spending years in jail’.

As the appeal was successful, it’s clear none of this - including the ‘quotes’ from the prosecutors - happened.

Putting up the wrong article is one thing. But filling it with completely invented ‘facts’ and ‘quotes’ is something else entirely. 

“Remember people, this is just ordinary journalism from the Mail. Most articles contain the same amount of made-up stuff.”