*NEARLY TWO-THIRDS OF DAILY MAIL ARTICLES WERE FOUND TO BREAK IPSO GUIDELINES, ANALYSIS FINDS
*IN ONE YEAR, 63 PERCENT OF ARTICLES ASSESSED DIDN’T PASS REGULATOR STANDARDS
Well, actually, that’s manipulating the data a little bit. What I’m talking about is articles that IPSO received complaints about. Two-thirds of the complaints were upheld.
I’m just using the Daily Mail‘s own sensationalist reporting techniques on the paper itself. On Monday this week, a similar style headline appeared about a report on child refugees (below).
The headline and the sub-headers are focused only on those who were given age assessments because they looked like they might be over 18 and didn’t have any proof of age. It’s not the percentage of overall child refugees. That figure is around 13 percent (or 402 out of the 2952 applications, to be precise).
But the way that the Daily Mail has included the figure of ‘almost 3,000’ next to the words ‘two-thirds’, without making things clear, will probably have a lot of readers thinking that around 2,000 ‘bogus’ child refugees are coming here every year.
So I’ve been similarly manipulative. My headline relates to 55 complaints made about Daily Mail articles between April 2017 and April 2018. Of those articles, 35 were either ruled as breaching IPSO standards or were settled by a resolution statement before a ruling was given. The remaining 20 were passed as ‘clean’ by the regulators.
But I can see that by reading the headline and the sub-headers, people might think that two-thirds of all Daily Mail articles are breaking the rules.
Perhaps they might feel the urge to share the article on social media and generate faux-outrage based on something that is essentially a gross distortion of the truth.
It’s a bit naughty but I think I can live with it. If I get caught out, I’m more than happy to issue a very low-key correction on the whole thing in about 6 months time.
Don’t like what you’re seeing in the press? If you see an article you’re unhappy with, you can email the press regulators at inquiries@ipso.co.uk to voice your concerns. If enough complaints are received, they will have to look into it.
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