newspapers and Will 'More or Less' give James O'Brien a fisking?newspapers

If you recall, I found last Friday's Newsnight - the one with James O'Brien - to be deeply biased. 

David Keighley at News-watch doesn't just agree, he's also put a huge stick of dynamite under the programme's deeply dodgy use of statistics. 

It's a must-read post. 

Newsnight and Ipsos MORI had co-operated on a post-Referendum poll and that night's Newsnight gave its take on the findings. 

Here's an extract from James O'Brien's introduction:

And what about buyer�s remorse? All those voters who supposedly want to change their minds? Well, maybe not. 92% of respondents said they would definitely vote the same way. But of them, 5% of Leave voters did say they would now change their vote, compared to just 2% of Remain voters. 

Note the 'maybe' in "maybe not" there and the big "But". And note the statement that "5% of Leave voters did say they would now change their vote, compared to just 2% of Remain voters" - a 'finding' highly relevant to the programme's later discussions about overturning the 23 June referendum, perhaps with a second referendum.

Newsnight used the following graphic to illustrate the point: 

Here's how David outlines the problem: 

Third � and even worse, perhaps � two separate statistics of polling information were conflated so as to overemphasise the numbers who said they would change their vote. 

92% of the Ipsos Mori respondents said they would not change their minds if asked to vote in a second referendum (with 4% saying they would change their vote, 3% saying they didn�t know, and 1% saying they wouldn�t vote) 

Newsnight presented this 92% figure in the graphic shown above. However, O�Brien then introduced an additional statistic: that 5% of Remain voters and 2% of Leave voters said they would now change their vote. Two smaller circles were duly placed on the chart to reflect this, despite these numbers having no direct correlation to the initial 92% figure. Therefore, the graphics and commentary suggested 7% wishing to change their votes, whereas the Ipsos Mori data itself had given a figure of just 4%. 

Further, the two smaller circles of 5% and 2% cannot even be fairly compared to each other, given that more voted to Leave in the referendum than voted to Remain. The only way to have fairly reflected this difference would have been to have introduced a second chart, showing the overall numbers of Leave and Remain voters, and how potential shifts in voting intention might have affected the totals. 

A closer inspection of the Ipsos Mori data also reveals that, to produce the 5% and 2% figures, two responses were combined: those who would �definitely� change their vote, and those who �probably� change their vote. 

Had Newsnight focused only on those who were certain to change their votes, then the chart and commentary would have been even less striking: only 1.1% of those polled would definitely change their Leave vote, and just 0.4% would definitely change their Remain vote � a far less dramatic statistic than the one selected. 

Put another way � bringing in the unweighted sample size of 935 voters who were actual consulted to reach these findings �  only FIVE  people told Ipsos Mori that they would definitely change their mind from �remain� to �out� and two people said they would definitely switch from �remain� to �leave�. On that highly tenuous basis, Newsnight told its viewers, in effect  that 5% of total �leave� vote of 17.4m was considering changing sides. This was a preposterous extrapolation.

Please read the polling results for yourselves. You will see that David is correct. 

Q3 is specific. As you can see for yourselves, only 1% of Leave voters said they "would definitely change their vote". 

So when James O'Brien told Newsnight viewers that "5% of Leave voters did say they would now change their vote", he wasn't giving them an honest representation of the poll's actual results. 

What he should have said is:

And what about buyer�s remorse? All those voters who supposedly want to change their minds? Well, almost certainly not. 92% of respondents said they would definitely vote the same way, 4% said they would change their vote, 3% said they didn't know and 1% said they wouldn't vote. And a separate question revealed that just 1% of Leave voters would definitely change their vote and 0% of Remain voters would change their vote. 

Once you've read those Ipsos Mori findings for yourself, wouldn't you agree that my re-write of James O'Brien's spin on the results is much closer to the reality of those results?

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And another thought that struck me is that - were Newsnight biased in the other direction - they could (and with more justification) have spun the findings of Q2. which asked, "And as you may know the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Do you think that was the right decision or the wrong decision for the United Kingdom?" 

The curious result of those findings is that 4% of Remain voters now say that it's the "Right decision" and 3% Leave voters now say it's the "Wrong decision" - a result that could very easily be spun to show that it's actually Remain voters who are suffering buyer's remorse.

******

Was the conflating of 'apples and pears' in that graphic merely sloppy or proof of bias?

Was the hyping and distorting of the 'buyer's remorse' findings merely sloppy or proof of bias?

Was the failure to point out the curious finding of Q2 merely sloppy or proof of bias?

All I'd say is that I've heard and seen how James O'Brien spun it on Newsnight and I've read the very careful Ipsos Mori presentation of the findings and, to my mind, Newsnight presented the findings in a reckless fashion. 

On top of the extraordinary levels of anti-Brexit bias recorded on this very blog last week, I'm far less inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt that I might have been before. 

This is shoddy journalism either way though.

newspapers and Alarm bellsnewspapers

Comments both here and elsewhere, as well as the evidence of our own ears and eyes, have convinced both me and Sue that the BBC has pretty much gawn mad since the EU referendum. 

It has not only subjected us to an absolute deluge of negativity about the result and its consequences but done so in such a sour and sullen way (by and large) that its own bias has rarely ever seemed so obvious before.

As David Keighley writes, over at News-watch, "Clearly, there was � for the first time � an attempt at least to talk to the �exit� side [during the referendum]. But since the result was announced, any semblance of balance seems to have evaporated."

I will admit I was seriously hoping to hang up my blogger's coat for a while after this referendum and just think happy thoughts for a few months, but the BBC's passive-aggressive (and at times simply aggressive) coverage of the 'Leave' vote and the aftermath have been so extraordinary that I'm keeping my blogger's coat on for a while longer and am about to roll my sleeves up again and crack on.

Here are some of things David is regularly seeing across the Corporation's vast output:

• the vote for �exit� was ultimately based on a form of senile dementia, coupled with hatred of immigrants, and thus on xenophobia and racism;
• that the young have been deprived of their EU birthright by selfish, reactionary pensioners;
• that Nigel Farage was the prime mover in an unleashing of �hatred�. Presenters such as Martha Kearney now routinely dismiss his approach with derogatory adjectives such as �sneering�;
• to report in close detail any sign of economic unease and magnify it to the maximum extent;
• to root out with tireless zeal all those who say that �Brexit� is so difficult to achieve and such an inconvenience that it will require at best a snap general election and at worst a second referendum to deal with the issues involved.
• To support in every way it can the cause of those wanting a second referendum because basically the first time round the electorate did not know what they were voting for.

I bet most of those will ring a bell with you too. They rang alarm bells with me.

newspapers and BBC One 'News at Six' (yet more)newspapers

When we last left our monitoring of which side's angle comes first in either the headlines or the whole bulletin on BBC One's News at Six (EU referendum-wise), the tally stood at a hugely imbalanced 14 for Remain and 3 for Leave. 

In the week since we've seen:

15/5 Leave "Boris Johnson compares the EU to Hitler, saying both wanted a single European state. His critics say the comments are offensive".

16/5 Remain "The Chancellor George Osborne has said the economic debate over whether Britain should stay in the EU is over. Speaking at Stanstead Airport Mr Osborne said an exit from the European Union would be 'a one-way ticket to a poorer Britain'".  

17/5 Remain "A war of words inside the Conservative Party over the EU referendum. Lord Heseltine attacks Boris Johnson. Lord Heseltine: "He is behaving now irresponsibly and recklessly and I fear that his judgement is going"."

19/5 Leave "Migration is one of the big issues in the EU referendum debate. The latest official figures show a sharp rise in the number of EU migrants working here. Those campaigning to leave the EU said it proves that UK workers are losing out. Downing Street has said that the vast majority of jobs in the UK are carried out by British workers."

20/5 Leave "Michael Gove of the Vote Leave campaign warns of massive extra demands on the NHS if we stay in the EU".

...which takes the running tally to: 

Remain - 16

Leave - 6

And here's where things get a bit complicated. 

The two Remain-led days' coverage put the respective Remain campaigners' cases first and foremost. They then followed through with that case.

Please contrast that with...

The 15/5 coverage, which may have led with Boris but it did so by somewhat misrepresenting Boris and focusing on the "outrage" he'd caused. Unlike all of the Remain-led stories, this Leave-led story wasn't helpful to Leave (at least it wasn't after the BBC had reported it!). This was 'negative' reporting for the Leave campaigner. It should really have gone in the Remain column.

And the 19/5 coverage was peculiar in its lack of reporting of Leave's points about the sharp rise in EU migrants working in the UK. The BBC suddenly went into pure 'facts and figures' mode. Viewers would have struggled to get any sense of why the figures might be a major issue relevant to the Leave side's case for leaving the EU.

And the 20/5 coverage - the one that looks like a 'proper' Leave-led bulletin was quite the jaw-dropper. I was going to write about this in detail myself, but David Keighley has already done it over at News-watch (complete with a full transcription). 

Michael Gove's claims were pretty much 'rubbished' by the BBC's deputy political editor John Pienaar:

The Leave campaign deny they�re scaremongering but some of the numbers today do look scary and they are meant to. They are also open to question. Take a look. We are told if we stay in the EU that will add between 2.5 and 5 million to the population. Why? Because it assumes that five countries, including Turkey, all join the Union by 2020, which is doubtful.  It takes no account of new controls. David Cameron says Turkey won�t be joining for decades.  But the Leave side say it would add between 6 and 13 visits to A&E departments, and increase of 57%. Why? Because migration and A&E visits have both gone up � there�s no conclusive evidence that the two sets of numbers are linked.

And then John Pienaar did what I'd expect a pro-Remain campaigner to do. He reached back to the pre-Referendum archive to broadcast a clip of Boris to further 'rubbish' the Leave point (fair dos if you're a campaigner; less so {I think} if you're meant to be an impartial broadcaster):

John Pienaar: The leading Leave campaign wasn�t convinced countless Turks were coming quite recently.
Boris Johnson (speaking in March 2016): Turkey�s been a candidate for membership of the EU since 1963.  I think the chances of the Turks readily acceding to the European Union are between, you know, nil and 20%.

Given that all three of the three previous 'Leave-led' stories focused on negative campaigning by Leave (Boris bashing Obama, Michael Gove accusing Remain of behaving badly and Nigel Farage slagging off other Leave campaigners), Leave are still getting the raw end of the deal here - even when their angle is leading BBC One's much-watched early evening news bulletin. 

The stats speak for themselves in suggesting the sheer scale of the pro-Remain imbalance but, oddly, they actually seriously understate the imbalance. The imbalance is even more massive than the stats suggest.