Archive for September 15th, 2008

News: Biased Reporting

September 15th, 2008

A recent (ok, August) report on This Is Money (originally from the Daily Mail – who own ThisIsMoney, Metro and many other publications) states quite clearly in their headline “BBC not value for money, say 47%” and continues with “Nearly half of the public think the BBC does not represent good value for money, a survey has revealed”

In the 6th paragraph, the survey results are shown to be “47% disagree that the corporation represented ‘good value for money'” – so 53% agreed that it does represent value for money*: so the headline should “BBC IS value for money, say 53%”.

(* = yes, I know that it could also mean that 53% either agreed or had no opinion, but without the details of they survey – whose source is unnamed – I can’t say for certain).

The biased survey/poll then goes on the “ONLY 41% agree that the licence fee is an ‘appropriate’ way of funding it” – again, it makes it sound like more people are against the licence fee than for it – but continuing the paragraph shows than only 37% are against the licence fee.

Talk about “getting the headlines you want!”

The BBC itself has an article on it’s website about What the survey didn’t say which illustrates other examples of biased survey results.

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