October 3, 2011 1:00pm by David Farrar

Most misleading story of the week

Go to 3 News and read this story:

Labour leader Phil Goff will be clinging to the unexpected results of a new poll in which his party has picked up twice as much support as National.

But he is well behind John Key in the preferred prime minister stakes, according to the TVNZ Marae Investigates Digipoll, released today.

Labour’s on 38.4 percent support in the poll, followed by the Maori Party on 22.2 percent, while National’s on just 16.4 percent.

That is in stark contrast to other media polls, which put National above 50 percent support, with Labour rating at 30 percent or less, and the Maori Party on around one percent support.

It is in stark contrast to other polls, because the moron who wrote this story did not realise, and did not check, that it was a poll of Maori voters only!!

How did this get past a sub-editor and get published? The 3 News political staff will be or should be embarrassed this story made it onto their website.

UPDATE: 3 News have commented that the story was from their wire service, but they apologise for not checking it.

The wire service is called NZN. I’ve not heard of them before. Are they one of the replacements for NZPA?