Tag Archives: daily mirror

A letter to the Daily Mirror regarding MPs whose former partners now work as prostitutes

By Iain Roberts | Published 5th September 2010 - 9:40 am

Dear Will Payne at the Daily Mirror,

If you’re going to run a big exposé about how an MP’s wife is working as a prostitute, do you think it might be worth mentioning before the very last line of the article that the couple separated in February (before the MP in question had even entered Parliament)?

I realise that, had you made it clearer, it would have been obvious that you only ran the story in a cheap and rather sad  attack on the Tories, and to have the excuse to print pictures of the woman in question in her underwear.

I …

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Posted in Op-eds | 38 Comments

Ooops! Mirror gets poll graph wrong and inflates Labour’s position

By Mark Pack | Published 24th March 2010 - 11:03 pm

I blogged earlier today about how the Mirror bigged up a poll showing Tory support unchanged (within the margin of error) into a story of how their support was plunging.

But looking again at the story, I realise just how badly wrong their graph is.

The two key pieces of information about Labour’s rating in the poll are that:

(a) It was 30%

(b) It was 32% in the previous poll

Now look at the graph:

Mirror poll graph

See what’s happened? What should be a downward Labour line has become a flat …

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Posted in Polls | Also tagged | 20 Comments

Those of a statistically nervous disposition should look away now

By Mark Pack | Published 24th March 2010 - 9:44 am

A double triumph in the Mirror today: for Vince Cable and for British journalism.

For Vince Cable – congratulations on another poll putting you the most popular choice for Chancellor (32% versus 23% for Darling and 21% for Osborne).

For British journalism – take a bow at a story that uses phrases such as “plunges” and “it’s all the fault of George Osborne” when in fact the poll results are, er…, not statistically significantly different from the previous poll by that pollster. (The changes are all within the margin of error.)

Perhaps next time we’ll have a footnote, “Hey, the above …

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Posted in Polls | Also tagged , | 3 Comments

Why David Cameron was right to claim for chocolate bars on expenses

By Mark Pack | Published 3rd December 2009 - 4:41 pm

Given my love of chocolate, today’s Daily Mirror front page at first made me happy. Four big colour photos of bars of chocolate! And David Cameron in an expenses scandal!

But once I read the story, it quickly became clear David Cameron has done nothing wrong.

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , | 8 Comments

And the award for most desperate headline goes to…

By Stephen Tall | Published 6th May 2009 - 2:25 pm

Kevin Maguire in the Mirror for this effort:

Lib Dem support for the Gurkhas will cost them seats

His rationale for this, erm, counter-intuitive view? Though crediting Nick Clegg’s campaigning on behalf of the Gurkhas as “principled”, Kevin then argues that his “cosying up in bed together [with David Cameron] will cost the Lib Dems seats”.

Hmmm. Quite apart from the idea that the Lib Dem leader could (even if he’d wanted to) refuse to stand on the same platform as his Tory counterpart as part of a non-partisan campaign, what’s the evidence for Kevin’s suggestion?

Well, on the one hand …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , | 4 Comments