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That’s it. I’ve had enough. BBC – consider yourself warned – every deliberate statistical error which oozes its way onto your website will become a matter of record.

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The Crime
Firstly, a justification. Most of the mainstream media today suffer from a terrible affliction. It would appear that a large proportion of journalists have a large abscess in their bodies – sometimes over 100 cubic-centimeters. And to make matters worse, it would appear to be in exactly the same place where their brains should be.

How else can we explain the shockingly moronic reporting of science and statistics in the news today?

The only other explanation is that they’re somehow deliberately misinterpreting facts and presenting them in such a manner as to evoke the most acute response possible from their readership. But they wouldn’t do that, would they? Deliberately mislead and deceive their beloved readers and viewers? No?

Of course they bloody would.

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The Accused
But they shouldn’t. And we all know this. However, while the PCC remains Rupert Murdoch’s well-trained and obedient dog – instead of the fearsome, powerful rottweiler the public deserve to have defending them – there’s nothing we can do about that.

But don’t worry. It shouldn’t matter.

There is, after all, an independent media body in the UK. A wonderful beacon – envied the world over. They don’t work for profit. Their only mandate is to serve the British public. They’re different.

I’m talking, of course, about the BBC – but I’d forgive you for not realising, since none of that is actually what they do.

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The Charges
The BBC, despite its mandate, has become all-too complacent about bending facts and dancing to whatever tune the more sensationalist media start farting from its metaphorical bagpipes. The Beeb have, for all intents and purposes, abandoned the public interest they are supposed to serve – and for no greater reason than “Well everyone else is doing it. We have to compete.”

Sorry BBC, but that’s not enough for me.

I dutifully pay my license-fee every year – like oh-so-many others – and we demand a news service interested in facts, accuracy, balance and public-interest. Note, BBC, that we make the distinction between public-interest and what-the-public-happen-to-currently-be-interested-in-because-Simon-Cowell-is-bloody-good-at-advertising.

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The Evidence
So, as of this moment – every statistical error on the BBC, every bit of science that gets a misleading headline splatted upon it, every sensationalised report – everything will be logged. The nature of the crime will be recorded and, given time, I’ll probably amass a large volume of data of my own – and a few creative uses to which I will accurately put it.

BBC – You have been warned.

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So let us begin…

Exibit A
Today’s offering comes from the piece entitled – ‘Long-term harm’ of too much TV for toddlers.

(The mini-headline for this piece – appearing on the most-read or most-shared section – is ‘Long-term harm’ of Toddlers’ TV, which is even more vague and misleading – and could even suggest that the content aimed at young children is causing some sort of physical affliction.)

Spot the BBC’s signature-move of taking a section of quote out of context. You don’t even need to hunt for the whole of the quote – because if the whole of the quote agreed with the headline, there would be no need to only use half of it. The quote itself doesn’t appear in the article, so it’s impossible to check.

Note: there are no regulatory guidelines governing the contents of headlines. The BBC could run a story about a sick sheep in Cumbria under the headline ‘Gordon Brown rapes Pope’ and the BBC Trust – useless though it is already – would have no legislative powers to stop it.

The gist of the article is that toddlers who watch too much television are thereby doomed to fail in school. The article – as with many before it and, no doubt, many more to come – implies a direct link between television and education standards.

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What did they do Wrong?
In “statistical language” this is a implied to be a causation or “causal-link” – the first thing causes the second – in fact, the study reports only a “correlation” – both things (television watched and academic performance) follow the same pattern. The difference may – at first – seem irrelevant, but when we look deeper, we see that it isn’t.

And that’s why it’s so important for the BBC – and all media – to get these things right.

While the article implies Television causes poor performance, it is much more likely that both a large volume of TV-time; and poor educational performance, are both caused by a third, unreported factor?

In this case – can we perceive how a poor parent would (1) dump their child in front of the television for long periods and (2) do little to motivate their child to learn? Of course we can. The third factor is bad parenting.

And so the story becomes  – Bad Parents Sit their Kids in Front of the TV all Day, Feed them Junk Food and Don’t Help them in School.

Well shock-fucking-horror, BBC. What insight. What depth. What a new and original way of stating-the-bleeding-obvious.

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The Moral of the Story
So the real lesson of the study is – be better parents and don’t use the television as a baby-sitter. The lesson is not – television = stupid. Poor parents who read this article could just find another inanimate object to become their child’s surrogate and the problem remains unsolved.

Does the BBC report this? It does not.

It plays-up this imagined causal link between television and intelligence (throwing in obesity for good measure) as if televisions all contain invisible imps who, armed with their vast array of invisible tools, perform incremental lobotomies on their unknowing victims – the viewers – while pumping glycerin into their skin through a magic portal in the human belly-button.

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If you read any BBC article guilty of distorting facts or misusing statistics, please let me know so it can take its rightful place in this catalogue. Drop me an email at andrew@andrewjamescarter.com or leave a comment below.

Oh, and apologies for the Fox-News-esque title of “Stat-Watch”. It seems I’ve already expended my creative-juices for the day.

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In a time when “public interest” translates to “what makes more money”… is there any way to fix the broken media of the UK?

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As predicted just a few days ago, the UK media has ignored the story about Tory MP candidate Phillippa Stroud and her church’s practice of performing exorcisms on homosexuals. This is, arguably, a story of at least equal significance to Bigotgate. And yet where is the outcry?

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Where are the condemnations? Recriminations? Removal from the party list? Is Stroud’s support evaporating as she becomes political anathema?

No, of course it bloody isn’t. And it was never going to, either.

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The Twits Have It
Check on Twitter and you’ll still see #PhillippaStroud trending. The Guardian and The Observer – the only major outlets to have reported the story – broke the news two days ago, and yet the hash-tag is still up there. Take a look at what people are tweeting and you’ll find a good 50% of tweets directed at the BBC, at Channel4, Sky, The Mail – anywhere and everywhere which claims to output “News” – and all of them asking why they were studiously ignoring Phillippa Stroud.

UPDATE: It appears I may have spoken too soon on the issue of Phillippa Stroud. A blog post is reporting that the BBC and Channel4 have both been gagged by a court-order from “high-up” in the Conservative Party. I’ll note that this is – currently – complete uncorroborated, but there may yet be hope for journalistic standards (if not the horrendous state of the UK’s libel laws which have allowed this to come to pass).

If I need to spell it out, the media of the UK has – for too long – worked towards its own interests and to hell with the public and their interests.

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The word spin was created to describe media-manipulating politicians. But those politicians, on all sides, were simply playing the media at its own game – attempting to level the playing field. Those who actually beat the media were granted the coveted title of “Spin Doctor” – an ingenious media-invention designed to make the public disbelieve any utterance from said politician ever again.

And it worked.

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The Blame Game
Even I find myself playing the media’s much-loved blame-game. So often has this card been played that it seems to have become pure zeitgeist to react to any problem by asking who is at fault. It may be human nature, but the entirety of human civilization has been an attempt to escape “human nature”, so I refuse to let us off that easily. There are sometimes situations which are unavoidable, we all know this and we know that no blame need be applied in such events.

So why is it that these events inevitably lead to the most blame being piled upon one poor victim. One media pariah, fired out of the bright-red blame-canon wearing a banner saying “Buy the [newspaper of choice] – otherwise you won’t hear about important things like this!”

Does it matter that the Spin-Doctors were originally trying to put across a message? I’d wager Alastair Campbell signed up with Tony Blair to make sure Blair’s policies got heard above the din. Don’t do much of that these days though, do we Alastair?

Are they to blame? Of course. Are they solely to blame? Hell no.

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Doctor, Doctor
The Spin Doctors were fighting a losing battle and instead of letting the media nose-dive itself into the gutter, they slowed the fall, eased it through the grating and provided a gilded staircase into the ocean of sewage below. Had the media simply driven forward, they may well have destroyed Tony Blair (sooner), but the rate and harshness of his demise would have left the public unable to ignore the media’s self-serving agenda.

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As it was, with the politicians playing the same game, people forgot which way was up. And now we’re neck-deep in sewage and I have the alarming impression that a significant portion of the UK hasn’t even noticed.

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The Sliding Scale…
The dynamic of the media – at least to my mind – is driven by sensationalism. At the top end of the scale sits the two worst offenders – those who, if made human, would currently be on trial in The Hague. I’m speaking, of course, about The Sun and, worse still, The Daily Mail.

Once one of these papers gets a story, they can set the entire media agenda. They report it, they sensationalize it, pervert the facts, quite often lie or deliberately misinterpret statistics and within hours, the rest of the mass-media has to report it too – because the Mail and the Sun have created News, and the other papers and websites and channels exist to report said News. Ignore it, and they lose out.

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…and How it Slides
Then there’s the other end of the scale – The Guardian and, formerly, the BBC – who refuse to sensationalize, refuse to make a story out of nothing, but who are still forced to report the tripe peddled by the Mail and the Sun because it is – once they’ve finished with it – News.

Note that those two are both non-profit organizations. And yet even the BBC has now begun slipping towards the Daily-Mail-Zone – grandiosely announcing they will ensure unbias coverage of the election and then quashing anti-Tory pieces, giving David Cameron more than twice the air-time of Clegg and Brown and airing “balanced interviews” where a life-long Tory voter stands next to an Undecided.

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Above are the BBCs profile pictures of Cameron and Brown. Cameron looks purposeful and intent, while Brown looks awkward and hunched. They must have several-hundred pictures of each leader – why choose these?

Shame on you Auntie Beeb.

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The Gears of the Machine
In other words, the News which reaches the majority of the UK voting public – because those of us who tweet, blog and receive our news from Uncle Internet are still a tiny minority – comes from The Daily Mail and The Sun. While The Sun was supporting Labour, we at least had balance on the see-saw of political sensationalism. For every smear-campaign out of the Mail, the Sun would have something equally repugnant ready to throw back.

But now The Sun has sided with the Mail in a combined effort to bring down the Labour regime. And they might just succeed. I’m not naive enough to suggest that all of Labour’s problems stem from the allegiance of one newspaper – but I’m also not naive enough to suggest that the Sun’s influence is negligible.

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Hypotheticals
Just ask yourself how great that Tory lead would be without the massive campaign of fear being directed at Gordon Brown.

If Nick Clegg hadn’t risen from nowhere and forced the Tory media-machine to fight on two fronts, David Cameron would have walked into Number 10 without breaking a sweat.

But what’s to be done? How can we reverse the force which drives public perception? Surely any attempt to force the media to change will be crippled by a campaign orchestrated by the very system it hopes to change?

Sadly, you’re probably right. However, this election may yet have one last googly to bowl (that’s a cricket metaphor, for the uninitiated).

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Generation Gap
Two days ago, the Governor of the Bank of England – Mervyn King – warned that whichever party won this election would be out of power for a generation, their cuts would have to be so severe.

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Perhaps with that much stacked against them, whoever takes power after Thursday will find themselves free of the chains of party-politics. If you’re guaranteed to lose the election no matter what you do, then you might as well do what you think should be done – regardless of public opinion (as set by the Daily Mail).

If only that were true…

There’s several reasons why this won’t happen. Well, two…

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A F**k in the Road
The Tories won’t do it – their reinvention is only half-finished – as long as they support policies like the Inheritance Tax Cut, they don’t represent half the people they claim to represent. They need the media machine to swing the game in their favour. Even if they look like losing power for yet-another generation, they’ll still need the likes of Murdoch and co if they’re ever going to return to office.

But what about the alternative? And, let’s be realistic, the alternative is a Hung Parliament. Whether that parliament is ruled by a coalition, an alliance – whichever or whatever – two parties will hold the balance of power.

And as long as their are two parties, there is no one entity to be blamed. Each will attempt to pass their seat in the blame-cannon to the other and neither will approach the blissful serenity of someone who knows they’re going to lose and decides to make the most of it.

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I Have a Dream…
A dream of all peoples, of all party-colours, united towards a common goal… *ahem*… Lets, just for a moment, walk past the grim future I’ve painted. Let’s put aside the inevitability and impossibilities and dream. What would be done? What should be done? – if we are to ensure that the British media ceases its campaign against the interests of its own readership.

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I don’t care if you vote Labour, LibDem, Tory, Green – even UKIP (because even balanced media would be unable to make your policies sound anything other than laughable). The only party I won’t include in this is the BNP – because I view them as less a party and more a form of sticky pond-life trapped in an embarrassingly useless evolutionary dead-end.

The point is – all parties have felt the wrath of the media when it catches the scent of profit – and, deep down, I suspect that all parties believe everyone would vote for them if only they were given a fair say. The fact that they’re all wrong in this regard is irrelevant.

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Out with the Olds
We need to regulate “News”. The act of delivering the news to the people of a country should be a public service. It should be a duty – not a means to make a quick profit by sacrificing public figure after public figure on the altar of zeitgeist.

Let’s set down – in law – a definition of News:

• Let’s say anything wanting to call itself “News” has to stand by these measures. Including News Channels, News Papers and everything else – filling all loopholes.

• Let’s say it has to be utterly unbias – and define exactly what we mean, not the BBC-style “We’re unbias. Did you see how pretty Dave looks today?”.

• Let’s ban deliberately emotive language – I haven’t heard the word “plan” on the news in ten years, it’s always “plot”, “scheme” or, once, “machination”.

• Let’s impose strict measures for any outlet which gets the facts – or stats – wrong.

• Let’s set up an independent organisation with the power to impose those measures and even ban outlets which persistently flout these rules – not the toothless PCC which sits safely in Rupert Murdoch’s pocket, purring contentedly.

• Let’s add to the mandate of all Terrestrial TV channels to require them to produce News instead of the BBC’s brand of masquerading sensationalism.

• Let’s have some means of measuring accuracy and believability – and make sure the public know how each of their News outlets rate on that scale. Let’s even make News outlets publish that figure front-and-center.

Yes, they’ll say it infringes free-speech. They’ll rally the banner of Freedom of the Press. They’ll ignore that we’re not telling them what they can and can’t report – just making it illegal to report things they know are wrong or misleading. They’ll send out the rallying cry and bring the UK population marching in the streets – obediently demonstrating against their own interests.

And, worse of all, they’ll continue to try and oppress those rights which, at least in my mind, outrank Free-Speech and Free-Press and always have – Free-Thought and Free-Opinion.

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Freedom of Thought
People have the right to decide for themselves – to choose their own opinions. They are currently being denied this right on a grand scale. It must end and I believe the above list is the way to achieve that.

The entire forces of worldwide mass-media will try to stop us.

But there is yet a hope, the tiniest glimmer, that they may fail…

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The Lib-Dem immigration policy is worth a second look.

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What follows is an attempt to counter-balance the huge campaign of fear and misinformation currently being perpetrated by the right-wing media against Nick Clegg’s stance on Immigration.

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Since the majority of hits to my blog arrive through twitter, you’re probably already aware of the shameless media bias surrounding the general election. You’ve probably read other articles lamenting the influence of people like Rupert Murdoch, over the hearts and minds of the UK’s voting public.

And, I’ll admit, even if I double my best-ever readership, only four-hundred people will ever read this article.

So why bother?

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A Call to Arms
It is, I admit, an attempt that seems doomed before I even begin. But, if you agree with what I write here; if you learn something you didn’t yet know; or if you simply want to help make some effort – however small – to turn the tide against the Mail, Sun, Times, Telegraph, News of the World, Sky and every other media outlet invested in seeing a conservative government – and trampling democracy into the dirt to see it happen… If you want to stop that, then get someone else to read this – retweet, share, email, whatever you can.

I just feel the need to do something. To set the record straight where it has been so cruelly and immorally skewed. Whether you already agree or – more importantly – if you disagree, I beg you to read on. You might just find yourself pleasantly surprised.

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Bigotry is Bigotry
First of all, I’d like to make a few things clear – things which, in the light of bigotgate – seem to have suddenly become acceptable and defensible. There are problems with our immigration system – no party denies that. However, to blame these problems on the immigrants themselves – as Gillian Duffy now famously did – is nothing short of intolerant, prejudicial bigotry.

The system is at fault, not those caught within it.

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Immigrants: Knowledge Check
Immigration is key to this country’s economy. Before the recession, unemployment was at its lowest in almost thirty years – despite the UK population being at its highest peak ever. This means that there were more people working than ever before – more money flowing through the economy – therefore more wealth for the UK.

That’s how the economy works. That is, in actual fact, what the economy is.

Were it not for the immigrant workforce, the economy would have been even weaker when the “credit crunch” hit.

Immigrants also form the spine of the NHS. A large number of doctors and nurses are migrants to the UK. Were they not here, the NHS would be facing a staffing crisis.

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Immigrants are also less likely to claim benefits than UK-born citizens.

They also pay a higher rate of tax.

Don’t accept people telling you that immigrants are lazy spongers who came here to cheat the system and get an easy life. Simply to be here, they have to work harder and pay more than those of us fortunate enough to have been born on the correct side of a line on a map.

If you blame immigrants for the problems of the immigration system, you are – whether you realise it or not – bigoted.

But given the prejudice and intolerance paraded by the right-wing press, it’s not hard to see why such views are widely considered acceptable – and why no politician (to my knowledge) has yet spoken out to defend Eastern Europeans after Gillian Duffy’s comments.

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The Core Policies
So, with no further delay, let us begin. I’ll come to the Lib Dem’s amnesty in a moment, but first let’s look at the other pledges from the Liberal Democrats:

• Create the first specific UK Border Police Force. Currently the National Border Force lacks the powers and measures to properly police illegal immigration. The Liberal Democrats would turn the NBF into a proper Border Police Force – with the powers and abilities of all other law-enforcement agencies.
  Neither Labour nor the Tories plan to do this.

• Encourage immigrants to Settle where they are Needed. By improving Labour’s “points system” to encourage immigrants to settle where they are needed – such communities will benefit from a larger workforce and a greater tax-base (immigrants to the UK pay a higher rate of tax than citizens). This would also prevent large numbers of immigrants settling in communities which are already suffering from high levels of unemployment.
  Again, neither Labour nor the Tories have a plan to deal with this issue.

• Work with the EU to require other EU states to accept more Asylum Seekers. This would reduce the asylum burden on the UK without restricting our humanitarian responsibility towards those fleeing from persecution. The Lib-Dems would also place the management of Asylum Seekers (currently managed by the Home Office) under the remit of an independent agency. This would remove the often counter-productive influence of political and international bias. The Lib-Dems are also determined to end the detention of children seeking asylum and intend to make it illegal to deport people to nations where they would face persecution, imprisonment, torture or execution.
  Yet again, these are issues not addressed by the other main parties.

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Amnesty National
And now for that Amnesty. First, allow me to point out that neither the Tories or Labour have outlined any plans for dealing with the hundred-of-thousands of illegal immigrants currently residing in the UK. Thousands are deported every year – but that’s barely 1%. The problem is that the government doesn’t know where they are and there is no way to find them. Many illegal immigrants are also used by criminal gangs and are unable to seek help or escape because the system would just deport them. The Liberal Democrats are the only party proposing any measure for dealing with this.

So let’s get down to the core of it. This is not a blanket amnesty. It is – as the LibDems say – an earned path to citizenship. In order to qualify for the amnesty, an illegal immigrant would need to:

• have lived in the UK for ten years or more
• have a clean criminal record
• be fluent in English
• be sentenced to community service to pay back to the community (a penance, if you wish)

Currently, these people are here, they are living in the UK, they are using public services – and they are not paying taxes. The amnesty would add an extra 600 000 people to the tax system of the UK – people who are here already and who cannot be found in order to be deported.

And let’s not forget that immigrants pay a higher rate of tax than those born in the UK.

The amnesty would also reduce crime – crippling the gangs who rely on such immigrants to survive and potentially locating a huge volume of people willing to testify against those gangs.

In one swift movement, this plan would hugely increase tax revenue and greatly reduce crime. And it has no drawbacks because the people who gain citizenship are here already.

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The Imaginary Drawback
“But there is a drawback,” I hear you cry “An amnesty will just encourage people to come here illegally!”

Do you really believe that? Do you really think that the thousands or millions of people, desperate to reach the UK, will suddenly be further encouraged by this? The promise of clean water, no war or genocide, good education, equal opportunities and the NHS isn’t already enough? You think there could be a significant volume of people just waiting for a one-off amnesty that wouldn’t apply to them anyway (since it would require people to be here before 2010)?

There are already a huge number of people who would love to live in the United Kingdom – it’s a measure of our prosperity – they’re already trying to get here by whatever means they can. I don’t think we could possibly encourage them more than they already are.

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Should anyone wish to read more on the Liberal Democrat vision of Britain, I direct you to their online manifesto. Or, alternatively, you can download the complete manifesto as a pdf.

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