Lies, Dam Lies and the Media

Of course the real quote is Lies, Dam Lies and Statistics.

People have always twisted the numbers to suit their case. For example.

If 20% of all road accidents are caused by drunken drivers then the other 80% are caused by sober drivers. So, clearly, if you drive whilst drunk you are four times less likely to have an accident.

Weather forecasts are right 40% of the time , which means they are wrong 60% of the time. So if you always believe the opposite of what the weather forecast says, you will be right more often than they are.


And now we've got the football match kicking. It appears that before the game the 'victim' had been tweeting that he was going to waste time. But this was rarely mentioned on the news. Then there is the camera angle that all the news programmes chose to run. The shot they chose to run and rerun appeared to show the player kicking the boy. However had they chosen to show the kick from the opposite side, we would have all clearly seen the player kick the ball which was under the boy.

This shot is clearly much less sensational and so less broadcastable.

Once again this activity is aimed at manipulating our minds not educating them.