Wednesday 31 March 2010

Fun With Immigration Figures - Biased BBC

Fun With Immigration Figures: "
From the Let's Compare Headlines Dept, we have another example of counter-spin in action. Via Channel4s FactCheck we hear that:



'Gordon Brown has done it again. The statistics he used for 2009 are an under-estimate, because they don’t include all migrants. The figures he used for 2007 and 2008, however, do. So he’s misled the public by comparing the most flattering data for the latest year with the most unflattering data in the previous years.'
That gives us a stark insight into the subject of a surprisingly wide spread of headlines:



'How Gordon Brown's podcast turned an immigration rise into a fall' - Daily Mail



'Gordon Brown accused of fiddling immigration figures' - Daily Telegraph



...a wide spread, because BBC doesn't seem to think it's that big a deal...



'Row over Gordon Brown immigration figures podcast'



A 'row' sounds so much less interesting, eh? Move along, nothing to see.



Hat-tip to GeorgeR in the Comments

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