How Full Fact reports media invention
“Whenever the newspapers write about something I know about,” said my dad half a century ago, “It’s always wrong. Journalists are the sloppiest people on the planet”.
O innocent time, when sloppiness was the only problem: these days in our media, the main thing lumped on top of poor checking is agenda.
There is a website called Full Fact, and I commend it to everyone. For if it has an agenda, I can’t see it. It’s raison d’etre is to correct wildly-stated wrongness.
Back in February, Full Fact alerted four national newspapers to inaccuracies in their reports which claimed “life expectancy in one South Wales estate is lower than earthquake-hit Haiti or war-torn Iraq.”
The Mirror, Mail, Telegraph and Sun all reported that male life expectancy on the Gurnos estate in Merthyr Tydfil was 58.8 years, when in fact this figure referred to healthy life expectancy; the length of time men could expect to retain good health. The actual life expectancy for men was closer to 70 years, above both Iraq and Haiti – earthquaked, war-torn or otherwise.
It’s the expected line-up: Mirror (Labour), Mail (mad), Telegraph (annexed by ex-Mailites) and Sun (Murdoch). Says Full Fact:
‘Since then, three of the newspapers have offered to print corrections. The Mail and Mirror were quickest to acknowledge the error and correct the record, although both took over a month to do so. The Telegraph followed suit soon after, and today Full Fact is pleased to report that the Sun has agreed to print its own correction’.
Full Fact is now in my favourites file. The trouble is, one knows that the retractions appeared (a) when nobody was interested any more and (b) on page 37 next to the small space ads for shoelaces. There are a million votes in it for any politico prepared to add but one codicil to the press behaviour Bible in the light of Hackgate: retractions must be self-insulting and bannered front page pieces. For example – purely hypothetically –
‘DE MENENZES FICTION DICTATED BY ANDY HAYMAN WAS RUN ON COULSON’S ORDERS AND WE’RE SORRY WE DID IT, IT’S ALL ABOUT STAYING FRIENDLY WITH THE POLICE AND WORKING FOR RUPERT MURDOCH’.
Or something similar. This will not, of course, end the thinking Left’s more censoriously subtle approach of ‘interpreting’ things, making up stuff about Chelsea shirts, regurgitating bad science, and deliberately giving out only their half of the facts. But – like 40,000 corporate finance directors being used to build a sea-wall – Full Fact is a good start.
The Slog 