Lies, damn lies...

[andrewducker]

I was terribly amused to see a headline in The Metro this morning reading (something like) "Metro Readers Horrified by ID Cards".

I wasn't amused by the headline itself though, I was amused when I read down the rest of the article to see that, when asked to choose between (paraphrasing):
"I am horrified by the thought of ID Cards", "ID Cards are a good idea, but I'm not 100% convinced our incompetent government will implement them well" and "ID Cards - everyone should have one stapled to them at birth" 34% of people had said they were horrified at the idea, 35% were fine with them and 28% were in favour (leaving the usual few who know nothing)

Now, technically speaking, the headline was accurate - there were metro readers horrified by ID cards. But equally accurate would have been "2/3 of Metro readers are absolutely fine with ID cards."

Still, they got a nice headline out of it.

Oh - The Metro is owned by the same people as The Daily Mail - which is probably the most horridly right wing paper in the UK mainstream.

Comments

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

It's also worth noting that, unless things have changed, the news articles in the Metro aren't their own. They're word for word news association wire stories and articles from other papers in the same company. Can't remember which papers it is now...

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

Don't forget the Reuters reports too though...

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

That was mostly what I meant by wire service things :-)

We get a feed from (among others) Reuters on our work intranet, so I generally read the stories there, then see them again without the updates and corrections the next morning in the metro

[drjon.livejournal.com]

"2/3 of Metro readers are absolutely fine with ID cards."

And isn't that horrifying!

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Seem to be reprints of Evening Standard (a London evening paper) articles down here