An exercise in spin?

[pmv]

Struck by the way the Daily Mail reports this poll, compared to how the polling company itself presents it.

The Mail's take

One in three Brits SUPPORT anti-immigration protests, poll reveals

Angry far-right mobs have brought chaos to Britain's streets - looting shops, setting fire to hotels and targeting police officers - in some of the worst disorder in over a decade.

www.dailymail.co.uk

The first data mentioned early in the article is

But a new YouGov poll has now revealed that one in 14 Britons are actually sympathetic towards the rioters and believe the unrest is 'completely justified'.

A quarter of people also hold Muslims responsible for the riots, while around a third have placed their blame on Sir Keir's Labour government. Thirty-eight per cent have also blamed former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

While the linked polling company page itself says

Most responsible for the violence in the eyes of the public are the rioters themselves, with nine in ten Britons (88%) viewing them as at least somewhat responsible for causing the unrest, including seven in ten (71%) viewing them as holding a great deal of responsibility.

The actual data (lumping together 'a great deal of responsibility' and 'a fair amount of responsibility') is

The rioters themselves 88%
Social Media 86%
Far-right groups 74%
News Media 69%
Immigration policy 67%
Tommy Robinson 57%
Nigel Farage 47%
2010-2014 Tory government 55%
Southport murders 46%
all the protestors 40%
immigrants 38%
sunak 38%
Labour govt 36%
Starmer 33%
Russia (via social media influence) 33%
Muslims 25%

Yet it's that last entry, mysteriously blaming 'Muslims' (when no Muslims appear to have been involved in either the initial murders or the subsequent rioting) that the Mail gives most prominence to (they do get round to mentioning the other alleged culprits way down near the bottom of the article).

YouGov's headline on their own poll data

Few Britons support the disorder, with the vast majority saying it is unjustified and that the views of the rioters are not representative of the wider population​

The Mail's headline on the same data

One in three Brits SUPPORT this week's anti-immigration protests - and one person in 14 backs the rioting too, shock poll reveals: A quarter of people say Muslims are at least 'somewhat responsible' for the unrest​

Strikes me that the Mail is subtlety trying to give encouragement to the rioters in the way it spins those poll results.

 

[WelshBloke]

I have the mail blocked at my homes router. They are scum.

 

[MrSquished]

So what's going on in the UK? I'm too wrapped up in US politics right now but I have seen some kind of scary tidbits about shit in the Union Jack, and Elon is getting involved too.

 

[pmv]

I have the mail blocked at my homes router. They are scum.

I get bored and run out of non-paywalled things to read. Plus am curious what the 'other side' are saying about things. There's something fascinating about the way the Mail and the Telegraph, particularly, spin the facts.

Biases aren't binary, there's more than just 'left' and 'right'. E.g. The Express is laser-focussed on catering to pensioners without much formal education, and has a weird love of trying to scare its own readership to death. While the Observer loves weird 'wellness' cranks, in a way that's often quite right-wing for a supposedly 'liberal' paper.