It’s not been a great month for newspapers reporting their own polls. Despite the concept of newspapers accurately reporting their own polls – i.e. a story that they’ve paid for and been given the full details of – being a fairly basic standard to aim for, we’ve had such low lights as the skewed graph in the Mirror along with its over-hyped language and the Sunday Times so twisting the findings of its own poll you’d have thought there must have been two. Not to forget the attack in The Telegraph attack on that dodgy process of weighting poll numbers; you know, that questionable approach which, er…, every poll commissioned by the Telegraph also does.
As it’s the end of the month, it’s also time for my latest scores on how newspapers have been doing. As explained at the start of the year, each time a newspaper reports an opinion poll that it has commissioned with national party ratings, the report gets scored out of 30 against a set of basic criteria.
Here then are the average scores so far this year:
The Times: 28
Sunday Mirror: 25
The Independent: 20
The Guardian: 15
News of the World: 15
Daily Express: 14
The Sun: 14
Mail on Sunday: 12
Daily Telegraph: 10
Independent on Sunday: 10
Metro: 8
Sunday Telegraph: 8
Sunday Times: 8
Daily Mirror: 0
People: data not available
No great surprises that the Mirror has come in bottom of the list given the stories linked to above, but it’s notable that of the four with scores in single figures two are broadsheets. Good quality reporting of your own stories isn’t something that the broadsheets consistently beat the tabloids at by any means.
One Comment
will you realy do what you say you are going to do if you win, coz i earn less than £7000 a year yet almost half of that goes in tax, and all the other party’s think about old age pensioners and people with children, what about the ones inbetween we cannot get help with nothing. also the laws in this country are so wrong and old fashioned now, it gives a step parent more right than a biological parent which is wrong, the law say’s a child has the right to say where they want to live, how can this be, they cant vote, they cant drink not old enough to smoke or have sex, yet old enough to say where they live. also fathers rights that stinks, my husband has not seen his son for 8 years because his ex has poisened his mind against his dad that much that the law says he can decide if he wants to see him or not, she has done all this yet still expects him to pay for him %15 of his wages, how are we meant to live. she did all this then she should be the one to look after him, to many women use there children as paunes it is like a game to them and it should be stopped, there is no need for it. i will be voting for you coz this country needs a change from Labour and Conservatives, i wish you all the best and hope you win, and if you do then listen to what the people want, coz at the end of the day, we pay all of you your wages. Thankyou Debbie Woollin.