Blurred Keys

19 was the magic number recently. When one of the latest Eurobarometers polls were released on EU citizen’s attitudes towards alcohol we were told the figure was the percentage of Irish people who binge drink. Three times the EU average, we were told.

We found 19% used in the report referring to Ireland. It was on the question “On a day when you drink alcoholic beverages, how much do you usually drink?” and 19% answered “5 – 6 drinks.” There’s a few problems with The Irish Time’s saying 19% is the ”Percentage of Irish people who binge drink, three times the EU average.”

First, the answer in the poll only included “those who claimed to have drunk alcohol in the last 30 days.” So, if everything else was correct, the percentage would relate to Irish drinkers, not the general population. There’s a big difference. The raw data in the survey shows 24% of Irish people polled said they abstained from drinking (an increase of 2% since the last survey, not that that’s too note worthy).

Another flaw with the 19% is that another 5% of Irish drinkers said they usually had 7 – 9 drinks in the one sitting, and 2% said they had 10 or more drinks. Given that the study defines ‘binge drinking’ as ”having 5 or more on at least one occasion,” that brings the figure up to 26%, not 19%. Ireland had a high level of people who answered ”it depends”, 4%, so the figure could be higher again. Although, it’s still of Irish drinkers, not Irish people in general.

It is a bit unfair highlighting any one outlet for this as news and other sections of many media outlets pounced on the 19% figure. Outlets across broadcast, in print, and online. The message was that the Irish are the biggest binge drinkers in the EU. And what’s wrong with this?

It leaves out the wider picture. As above, another 5% of Irish drinkers polled also answered 7 – 9 drinks, and 2% said 10 or more drinks. This compares with the UK, where 6% said 7 – 9 drinks, and 6% said 10 or more.  Although, the level in the 5-6 bracket  in the UK at 12% is lower than in Ireland.

The UK total is 24%, 2% more than the Irish total, but the UK has a higher level of people why say they drink more when they binge — making the problem worse.

The UK had a lower level of people who abstained, making the problem slightly worse again. For the record, among drinkers, Denmark and Finland had a total of 23% of binge drinkers, 10% is the EU average.  And Denmark, Finland and the UK had lower levels of people abstaining, so the amount of drinkers who binged was closer to the actual population.

Total percentages can be misleading. For example, a problem can appear larger than it is by comparing one country with another when both have different factors. While more people abstain in one country, in another a country less people may abstain and where less abstain fully they are likely to be more who drink less. Thus changing the stats in one country, making comparing directly less valid.

More people causally drinking with more relaxed drinking culture (in cafes, with dinner, in streets, with larger time windows to access etc) could also easily distort the stats when it come to blunt comparing country-to-country. They may still be a large amount of binge drinking in may of these countries, but the large amount of relaxed drinking distorts the stats, making the percentage smaller. If Ireland had the same culture of drinking as these countries then the percentage of binge drinks could be the lower, but the actual amount of binge drinkers could be the same or higher, the problem is the same or worse, just hidden in misleading stats.

The UK is not the only example, Denmark at 5%, and Belgium, Finland and others at 4% all were above Ireland at just 2% when it came to regularly drinking 10 drinks or more on one sitting.

As readers of Bad Science will know, facts often gets twisted around between the fact people and the journalists. In this case, the European Commission in Ireland said:

“Despite the end of the Celtic Tiger a survey released today shows that 19% of Irish people admit to binge drinking; the highest in the EU.”

So, the European Commission even twisted their own facts. How many journalists were lead from this rather than reading the report?

Journalists should know better than just reading a press release. There’s little to no excuse for not searching up at least the relevant sections of the survey document when it’s available.

The full report (PDF) — for those who managed to read, glance over it, or search ‘Ireland’ in the PDF version available online — also said:

“Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Slovakia and Spain have all seen a decrease in the percentage of those who have 5 or more drinks at least once a week and an increase in the percentage who say they have that many drinks less often than once a month or never. Nevertheless, Ireland, Austria and Spain remain among the Member States with above EU average levels of binge drinking”.

The table shows that, in Ireland, all categories of drinking are down since the last survey in 2006. Most showing a 1-2% drop, more notably the bracket for 7-9 drinks on one sitting is down 4%, those saying less then one drink is up 7%. In any case, headlines saying “binge drinking down” don’t quite have the same ring to them.

Binge drinking may still be a problem, but we’re clearly being given a muddled picture.

Elaine Larkin over at Journalist.ie has written about getting paid as a freelancer, what to do if your copyright is infringed, and, maybe most interesting, what freelance journalism rates are like.

The NUJ’s London freelance branch’s has also collected rates paid to journalists, including some Irish publications.

(thanks to @brian_foley for pointing out Elaine’s twitter account)

It is wrong gardai are lining up to pressure Evening Herald journalists to reveal the source of its story of a junior minster’s wrong doing. However, at the same time, the newspaper makes it very hard for people to take it seriously.

In a cover story yesterday afternoon, the newspaper highlighted how gardai are asking journalists for interviews, as well as requesting documents. It was a predictable move by the gardai.  There was also at least three comment articles on the issue.

The newspaper, however, makes it hard for people to take it seriously. The city final edition on Tuesday led with a story about an ex-lover’s argument on a street. The ex-lovers are a TV presenter and former model and high-profile developer, but the argument was nothing more than a noisy row. This is the kind of non-story with no possible public interest that the Evening Herald deems fit for its lead front-page story. How can this newspaper be taken seriously?

Entertainment or gossip stories also featured in all of the top four places on the paper’s website at different times when it was checked yesterday and today. What do I expect from the Herald? Is some solid Dublin news too much to ask for? Not too long ago the paper was at least good for that, you could over look it’s tone for some solid news not found elsewhere. This is not to say there is there is no place for entertainment stories, but rather a newspaper should be putting solid news first. And the paper’s editorialising and sensationalism seems to be getting worse.

This may all be viewed a ivory tower commentary. But the Evening Herald is losing circulation on a scale not seen at any other paper tracked by the ABC.  The downward trend at the Herald has also being more constant than most other. The average net circulation for the newspapers is down to 69,351  last year, compared to 104,137 just eight years ago in 2002. People may be reading the paper but fewer and fewer are willing to buy it. Furthermore, only an average of 61,438 people last year picked up the paper at its full price.

Within yesterday’s edition the paper covered the issue of a 30km/h speed limit in Dublin City Centre. The monthly Dublin City Council meeting was held on Monday. A Fine Gael councillor wanted the whole 30km/h zone scraped — even for small streets — so he tabled an emergency motion. Labour Party council members were willing to compromise reverting back to 50km/h on wider roads that were further away from the most pedestrian heavy areas. An amendment was attached to the Fine Gael motion. Both failed to reach the required amounts of votes.

Amazingly the first paragraph of the story covering this council vote in the Evening Herald, read: “A majority of city politicians want to revert the divisive 30kph speed limit — but it is here to stay because they can’t agree on how to change it”. This is nonsense, and clearly an inaccurate account of a highly contentious issue  (It should be noted that the online edition for some reason has a more accurate intro to the same article).

A comment article which appeared below the news story in the print edition was equally twisting of reality. It said: “The one bit of positivity last night was that Mr Slow finally bowed to public pressure when he tabled a motion for an amendment that would allow certain zones to revert to a 50kph limit. But it ended in failure when the number of votes fell short of the required majority.” No context or mention that those councillors who wanted the whole zone removed would not go along with the compromise. This is ill-informed or unbalanced commentary, it’s unclear which, maybe both.

Another thing you miss by not seeing the printed paper is the use of photos. One politician at the centre of the story is pictured, fine. One happy female journalist is shown in a byline photograph, fine. But then you have another female journalist (no byline on the page) in a photograph posing under a 30km/h sign, why? What’s the need for female journalists to be pictured like this? This practice is common at the Evening Herald, among others. How can a paper be taken seriously if it treats one section of its journalist like this?

Then there is also another woman pictured under a list of councillors voting — who is she? There’s no caption. But looking at the list of councillors, one name is followed by “(pictured)”. This councillor is not mentioned in the news or comment article on the page, and is has not being anyway notably vocal on this issue. Can anybody really take the Evening Herald seriously?

Gardai are very likely to have used current data retention laws to look at the phone records of the journalists in questions. Like the new wider Data Retention Bill which in its final stages before the Houses of the Oireachtas, no court order is need for this. So where do the paper stand on this? We were expecting to find nothing on the Evening Herald’s website about data retention, but there was a telling article about the paper’s position.

An opinion article without a byline – possibly an editorial — is headlined “Cack-handed Greens have made themselves look wobbly on crime” (Thursday, July 16, 2009). It said: “Eamon Ryan then let it be known that he’d fought bravely with the minister for justice to secure “significant changes” to the crime legislation on data retention published earlier this week”. This type of law has being passed in recent years in the name of tackling gangland crime and terrorism.

Of course the problem with this cheerleading of the Data Retention Bill and the then criminal justice bill, which the article also mentions, is that these types of laws have too wide of a scope to be abused. The Herald said, “all the evidence suggests that this is a bill the public wants to see passed right away.” But it’s this kind of law which now allows gardai to look at journalists phone records without court orders. The cheerleaders of bad laws do not have the moral right to cry when the kind of laws they promote are turned on them. Should anybody have any sympathy for them now?

Just with reports of music, film, and game piracy “costing” businesses in ‘lost’ revenue and the State in tax ‘lost’ taxes, one cannot lose something you never had. Claims from the Irish Tobacco Manufactures Advisory Committee of ‘loses’ as reported by the Irish Independent and the Irish Examiner recently are likely to be on the high side.

With lower music sales being blamed on piracy, reports from the OECD and others have said a more significant impact is likely to be consumers not having money to spend on growing types of media. Other reports outline how people downloading large amounts of music illegally are often the best consumers of the music and buy large amounts of music, gig tickets, and merchandise.

But the piracy line by these industries is still been reported as fact or claims without any mention of independent reports from groups such as the OECD which take a different line.

In the same vain, cigarette smokers who buy illegally imported cigarettes most likely could not afforded the same amount of cigarettes at the very high legal cigarette prices in Ireland. And it’s more complex than the cigarette industry claim, or what at least what is the result or their claims to newspapers.

There’s a lot to consider. Cost-benefit analysis for strict, strict control by the State would show a drop off of any possible benefit at some point –- it becomes more costly to control illegal imports than any possible tax take would generate. Even levered against health spend benefit, the benefit drops off. So, very strict controls would not be worth the cost. Control measures at ports can also damage other business by slowing down goods movements.

Furthermore, somebody is getting their figures messed up, the Irish Independent reported last month that:

“The manufacturers said last night the figures showed the geographic spread of the market for the smuggled cigarettes, which were estimated by the authorities to cost the Exchequer €500m every year in lost revenue”

But just at the start of the year the same reporter in the same newspaper said the following:

“In 2007, the Irish Government lost some €352m in taxes because of smuggling”

So, the most recent report claims that the cost to the Exchequer is “€500m every year”, but the same paper about five months before reported the Exchequer only lost “some €352m” in 2007? It get worse, the earlier reports says:

“CIGARETTE smuggling is predicted to cost the country more than €500m in lost revenue within a year”

So, what was first reported to maybe happen within a year, the second report tells the reader this is happening “every year.” Amazing stuff. Something which is predicted to happen “within a year” is then apparently happening “every year”. But the Indo’s Sunday paper, the Sunday Independent, said only in April:

“Cost to State of EUR2-per-pack price rise could have been as much as EUR500m in lost revenue”

So, get this. What is reported as something which only “could have” happened just back in April is already happening “every year.” Fault can often be found with this type of reportage based on reports and figures –- which rarely have an explained source or author — released by groups for one or another industry or cause. And often the PR people behind the apparent facts and figures are good enough at their jobs that blunders won’t be as obvious in reports just month apart, or figures will look realistic. However, in this case, the Examiner said on Saturday that:

“The illegal trade is reaching epidemic proportions and one estimate, for the losses to the exchequer per year by the end of 2010 of excise duties and VAT, has been put at 750 million”

Even if larger demand for illegal supply in a recession is taken into account, this is quite a jump from the claim of “€500m every year” printed in the Irish Independent last month – and even the €500m figure is in doubt given the record of reporting on the issue.

Gav Reilly ponders about the last edition of Question and Answers which excluded the central part of the show. The element which made Q&A what it was — the audience interaction.

That interaction lead to what will likely stand as one of the most powerful contributions in the programme’s history. Even those of us who felt sick after reading coverage of the Ryan Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Michael O’Brien’s now famous appearance gave viewers a greater understanding of the pain and anger felt by victims of abuse and the way the Government was handling the issue.

Wouldn’t it have been great be able to open the floor some questions out of the Taoiseach,  who was the final guest? Ok, so, Brian Cowen would have been unlikely to appear if he knew uncomfortable questions could come from the floor. But that should not be the concern of a current affairs programme.

Unfortunately,  John Bowman not only wants focus on more on history, he started to do so heavy with the last show. And that would be ok, if he was not so uncritical in his methods. Soft questions — like how the Taoiseach comes across on TV — were the order of the day and too much rhetoric from Cowen left unchallenged. What was the point of the interview?

In a question on standing by former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, Cowen answered:

“I see my job as being part of a collective authority which is cabinet and one supports the leader of the cabinet at all times. Without that you don’t get decision making…”

Isn’t this the type of unquestioning support of authority at all times the kind of environment that allowed abuse of children who were in the care of the State? Isn’t it the kind of environment the leaves too much room for bad decisions to be made on so many different levels? Has it not led to unaccountably?

Maybe it’s unfair to criticise Bowman when it seems to be standard in the media not to hold Government to account? Maybe Bowman is focused on some other part of the bigger picture I don’t see?

As Gav Reilly says:

The premise of the show was about getting public figures into a room and essentially holding them accountable. It will forever be a shame that the final guest, the most powerful the show could ever get hold of, was allowed to break that mould.

And to paraphrase Jeremy Paxman: When one is in a position to interview those in power the person should ask questions that people would expect to be asked, and continue until the question is actually answered. The amount of unquestioned rhetoric in the Cowen interview makes it fail this requirement. To be fair, Paxman also says one often gets it wrong.

In The Irish Times today, Peter Murtagh writes (’Journalists are supposed to be against abuses‘) about Monica Leech being awarded €1.87 million in her libel case against the Evening Herald / Independent News & Media.

He says journalists should not be standing “shoulder to shoulder” with those who abuse power — in this case the Herald.

The argument on the other side is the large sum awarded will deter serious journalism. But is it not the Herald which is at fault here rather than the jury? Beside money, what else does Independent News and Media understand? What else would make them think twice?

A round-up of news, comment and other info from news sites blogs, and message boards etc…

‘Irish Times’ readership up 1,000 a day, JNRS shows
State of our union as Village magazine closes
Minister criticises media’s coverage of parole decisions
Big increase in newspaper recycling
Irish media now more Eurosceptic, warns EC report
Changing media landscape in Ireland between 2002-2008 and its implications for public opinion about the EU (PDF)
Celtic Media goes freesheet as local newspapers slump
Job cuts loom at regional paper
Star on the rise but ‘market in for tough time’ 
TV3 to invest €10m in Irish-made programmes 
Media world: Silly season’s order of merit 
Taoiseach to scrap his ‘Big Brother’ media monitoring unit
INM show of strength
Video Content On Irish Media Websites

Following rumours of closure and then a very strange statement, the high quality Irish music magazine is to drop its cover price.

And you apparently don’t have to worry if your outside large distribution areas, State will post the magazine to you for "no more than the real price of postage and packing".

As Jim Carroll points out: "Oh and that line about ‘the first Quality National Music Monthly
available completely free of charge’? Surely, the lads and lasses at
State also read Analogue magazine which happens to be a quality national music monthly available completely free of charge?"

Here’s the press release…

Read the rest of this entry »

- Press Ombudsman says plagiarism is covered
- We get legal threats from an Irish Independent journalist

As examples of plagiarism are mounting against newspapers in the group, Independent News & Media seem to be unable to keep their hands off the copy and paste function of their PCs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Vincent Browne’s Village magazine is to cease publishing, he called the process a "suspension," and said to the Irish Independent that he hoped to resume printing in future. The magazine’s website, Village.ie, will continue, although it is currently off-line for updating.

After previous cuts in the workforce, the three remaining staff will be let go.

He told the Irish Times the move is due to "a significant downturn in advertising and the cancellation of special
contract publications we were undertaking for third parties."

Village was expecting to make a small profit this year, but the contract publications were central to this. In a recent interview with Marketing magazine Browne said: "My only backer, Michael Smith, lost about €260,000 and I lost in the region
of €1.2 million. Village is going to be a marginal exercise but we can
make money on contract publishing and we should make significant money on the
website".

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