An example of bad journalism
September 28th, 2003 at 2:27 pm by David FarrarThe SST has a story titled “Public demands ‘obnoxious’ Holmes be shown the door“.
And that would be a fine headline except in fact the public do no such thing.
Later down they report “The national poll shows one in five believe he should resign or be fired from NewstalkZB” which means four in five do not. Good God one in five people probably think Holmes should be sacked regardless of his “darkie” comments.
Also the poll had only 214 people take part which is a margin of error of 6.8% at the 95% confidence level. Worse they report a breakdown for the 45 men who took part which has a 14% margin of error!
And with 79% of the respondents being female, one can only conclude that it was not a random sample but some sort of self selecting sample which is useless as a serious indicator. No newspaper should report a self selecting sample as a seientific random poll.
The company they appear to have used is 18 Tracker which does focus groups not polls.
All in all one of the most incorrect and ignorant stories I have seen for a while.
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September 28th, 2003 at 6:57 pm
LOL i saw that as well. What a crappy poll.
And the editorial. Jeez it was like reading the socialist news or somthing.
Vote:September 28th, 2003 at 7:47 pm
Have just fired off a letter to the SST pointing out their errors. Starting to enjoy this complaining to media lark. Hope I’m not turning into a whining socialist!
Vote:September 29th, 2003 at 7:24 am
Is it possible to speak or make a submission in support of somone at the Broadcasting Standards Authority? I strongly resist any suggestions that “cheeky darkie” is racist. I think in a society where skin colors are not important, this is exactly the kind of comment you will, and can, make. Racism has a well-defined meaning and we’ll be going down a slippery slope if we call any criticism of a dark person racist.
Vote:September 30th, 2003 at 5:43 am
The really sad part about all this is how democracy and free speech are dying in New Zealand, victims of the politically correct left.
Take away Holmes “cheeky darkie” comments and everything he had to say about the UN in his full (and unreported) transcript is pretty well right on the money.
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