Paper Monitor
12:14 UK time, Tuesday, 19 February 2013
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Paper Monitor loves a nice cliche. Especially when so artfully realised by the national press.
"Lies" may be too harsh in this instance, but articles in the Daily Mail and the Huffington Post show what flexible friends statistics can be.
"Just one in seven want drugs laws liberalised and majority say possession should remain criminal offence," trumpets the Mail.
"Just 14 per cent endorse decriminalising drugs," it continues.
But HuffPo has .
"Legalised cannabis supported by more than more than half of Britons," it counters.
That's right. Even more than more than half. By Paper Monitor's calculations that must make it somewhere in the region of... more than half, albeit not quite as much as "less than all".
"Just one in seven support heavier penalties and more being spent on enforcement for cannabis offences," the article continues.
Of course it is natural to assume that the Mail readership may produce a wildly different survey than that of HuffPo.
But some spectacularly inventive Paper Monitor sleuth work - such as reading both articles - shows that they are using the exact same set of statistics, from a survey conducted on behalf of the charity Transform Drug Policy.
Following more advanced sleuth work, including a perilous encounter with Google, Paper Monitor found that Transform Drug Policy pro-change headline as HuffPo. Surprising.
Helpfully, though, they also provide a breakdown of Daily Mail readers, 46% of whom support cannabis decriminalisation - just below Conservatives (50%) and Labour supporters (55%).
Ah, how Paper Monitor loves surveys.
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