I hate to lay into the BBC again...

Actually that title meets official BBC standards of reporting. In fact I quite enjoy it.

Consider this headline on the BBC site this morning. In fact the apparent rise in violent crimes is almost certainly a statistical anomaly. You have to read to the end of the article to get a true picture. It misleads through the first paragraph as well, just to make sure 99% of viewers get the wrong impression (it's been shown that 90% of people only read the headline and of the 10% reading on 90% only read the first paragraph).

In fact:
- violent crime has not gone up, only recorded violent crime has ;
- a statistically valid survey of violent crime - not distorted by changes in recording criteria - shows a drop. This is reported in the same article.

Logically, either the BBC writers and editors are too stupid to appreciate this or they don't care or they are deliberately sensationalising and misleading the public. I'm sure many newspapers will report these figures in the same way, but my point is that the BBC as a supposedly unbiassed, state-owned broadcaster should be scrupulous in its reporting.