Lord Judge said … “The problem therefore is not the internet”

Headline:

Judge: Internet threatens justice

(From Thursday’s Evening Standard, page 7)

The polls are not just a surge in Lib Dems support but bit increase in the number of young backers of the party, and in the number of people saying they will vote overall. For the Tories to counter that energy with negative tactics, including “putting the fear of God into the electorate” over getting Brown again as PM, as Matthew d’Ancona suggests, will be deeply counter-productive, painting the Conservatives ever more distinctly an old party, wedded to the old ways. It’s a reaction against all this which is bringing so many new people into politics.

Mark Pack, LibDemVoice.org

The Evening Standard has won a significant victory in a High Court libel battle brought by a Conservative MP.

Jacqui Lait, MP for Beckenham, had sued over an article headlined “Women MPs will be put off by Kelly reforms”.

Mr Justice Eady today struck out elements of her claim and ordered her to pay £10,400 legal costs.

The November 2009 article correctly pointed out Ms Lait had claimed “large sums” to travel to her family home in Sussex even though her constituency home is only 11 miles from Westminster…

The judge said it was “unreal to suggest that readers of the Evening Standard would not think the worse of an MP who had taken advantage of (or “milked”) the expenses system simply because he or she had stayed within the letter of the law.”

Although it’s been widely covered, the coverage has been very similar – taking the top line figures from the report and covering press release without digging in to what the report really says. So if we venture in to the inner reaches of the report, what do we find?

The report is a very welcome piece of path-breaking research, based on in-depth local studies. Given the importance of registration, and the number of policy and organisational options available to politicians and council officials, gathering this sort of information is extremely useful.

An interim report was published in December (which we covered here) and this final report updates that with more evidence collected.

The use of in-depth local studies is a good move, but it immediately raises a caution about the quoting of figures as if they apply to the country as a whole. The report itself says, “the findings [from the case studies] cannot be used to report on national rates of completeness and accuracy.”

However, the report went on to say, “Under-registration and inaccuracy are closely associated with the social groups most likely to move home. Across the seven case study areas in phase two (therefore excluding Knowsley), under-registration is notably higher than average among 17–24 year olds (56% not registered), private sector tenants (49%) and black and minority ethnic (BME) British residents (31%).”

As a result, the 56% has been widely quoted in the media as if it were a national figure, despite the report explicitly saying it isn’t. Take the BBC (“the Electoral Commission has released results that suggests 56% of 17 to 24-year-olds may not be registered to vote”) or the Evening Standard (“The Electoral Commission says that just 56 per cent of young people are registered to vote”). You wouldn’t guess from either of those that “the findings cannot be used to report on national rates”.

What’s more, despite the implicit negative tone of the media’s coverage, the report actually suggests there is good news on electoral registration overall with a long-term decline halted:

Evidence available from electoral statistics and surveys of levels of response to the annual canvass of electors suggests that there was a decline in registration levels from the late 1990s to 2006. The same evidence base suggests that the registers have stabilised since 2006 although it is likely that the completeness of the registers has declined since the last national estimate in 2000.

In addition, the return rate for electoral registration forms across the country, which dropped sharply in 1996-2003 and then declined a little further in 2004 has quickened its recovery: 2007 was up on 2004 and 2008 was up on 2007 by a larger margin. Though the figures are still below the 1996 ones, the trend is heading in the right direction and the figures are higher than in 2005.

Moreover, the figures in the report are based on data taken at one of the worst points in the year for electoral register accuracy.

There is a full update to the electoral register each year, with a new register published on 1 December. It then steadily deteriorates in accuracy through the next year. The register can get updated through the monthly rolling register updates, but people usually leave it until the full register is redone to update their records. If a general election is called, they can however then update their records and still get a vote at their new address.

Therefore, it is normal to see registration levels drop through the year and it isn’t necessarily a cause of worry. By doing their studies on very old registers (eight to ten months old in all the cases used to get the 56% figure and other similar ones), the Commission (and to be fair, they know this and the report makes it clear – if you get to page 16) produced figures which are much lower than if the evidence had been gathered on a new register. Depressing the figures further, the research was done when there was no election in the offing and so people did not have any particular incentive to use rolling registration to update their records.

In other words, the registration figures found are much lower than we’d expect either on a new register or for a general election.

What’s more, the reason for low levels of registration amongst young people in the local studies may have little to do with levels of interest in politics but more to do with mobility:

92% of people who have lived at their current address for five years or more are registered, compared to just 21% among those who have been at their present address for a year or less.

So is it registration or journalism we should be worried about?

One other thing this report tells us is something about the how journalism is works – or doesn’t work. It’s easy to sympathise with hard-pressed journalist taking story and data from reputable source and turning it into story without much questioning. But the data isn’t nearly as uncontroversial as the uniformity of media stories would suggest.

Are the figures for youth registration bad because they’re low, okay because of the time of year they were taken or good because a long-term decline has been halted? You can argue any of the three – and were these figures a matter of political controversy, we’d have had talking heads and quotes arguing the case on each side.

But because there isn’t a National Association for Electoral Registration and Turnout Optimists and there is no argument between the political parties on the statistics, the figures don’t get an external sceptical eye cast over them. Add to this the Electoral Commission’s need to emphasise the importance of people getting registered, which provides an incentive to stress the pessimistic in its figures, and we get just the bad news reported. The good news doesn’t get a look in.

The full report is below and if you need any help to register yourself, visit www.aboutmyvote.co.uk or call the Electoral Commission helpline on 0800 3280 280.

(UPDATE: The Evening Standard, one of the media outlets to get the figures wrong, has now corrected its report.)

Electoral Commission Report on Electoral Registration

The Evening Standard ran a piece from Simon Jenkins, which included a bit of myth-recycling about what the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health had said about people clearing snow from outside their property.

There were two problems.

First, either Simon Jenkins or a sub-ed dropped the word “probably” making the quote sound far more definitive that in the original version reported in other newspapers. (I suspect it was no innocent error because there was also a similar distortion of what Lord Davies said in Parliament.)

Second, the quote was – even in the full version – wrong. It wasn’t what the IOSH had said at all.

Although the Evening Standard has today published a letter from the IOSH thoroughly rubbishing the claim (and credit to the Evening Standard for doing that), the original Simon Jenkins piece is still up on the web, retaining the error and with no indication of the subsequent letter. (Indeed, I can’t find the letter online at all.)

When newspapers get a story wrong, the standard response really should be to update the original, wrong version rather than leaving it there for people to continue to read in blissful ignorance.

That’s not only the right thing to do by whoever you’ve wronged with your error, it’s also the way to treat your readers with respect. That’s why it’s what newspapers who currently don’t do this as a matter of course should starting doing so – and why it’s what the Editors’ Code of Practice should require it of them.

Let’s hope the current consultation over the Editors’ Code of Practice brings about this change. In the meantime, I’ve dropped the newspaper a line to find out if or when they intend to correct the piece.

UPDATE: The Evening Standard replied promptly to my email (and a follow up) and I’m glad to report that they have made changes to the story – including making clear where the quote used came from, restoring the word “probably” and adding a link at the foot of the story to the letter that was published the following day. This doesn’t quite cover all my points above, but it is a big improvement.

A final thought: I’d forgotten at the time I wrote this piece that the last time I raised an issue of accuracy with the Evening Standard they also responded promptly and changed the piece. Just goes to show, it can be worth raising issues with newspapers and the Evening Standard in particular.

In central London, near the tube stations in particular, that isn’t likely to be much of a problem.

But take a look at the distribution map on the Standard website: currently there are no distribution points in NW3, NW5 N2, N6 or N8. Areas that do have distribution points are not that better served. N19 for example has but the one, at Archway Tube station. N4 comes out better, with Finsbury Park station and two supermarkets (Stroud Green Road Tesco and Green Lanes Sainsburys), but even so that is far fewer places than the number of newsagents who have been selling the Standard.

The paper may be free, but would you go out of your way to find it?

So will the Standard end up being a free central London newspaper rather than a voice across the capital? That’s a question of interest not just for its financial future, but also for its editorial and political outlook. If it is predominantly a newspaper of those who live or work in central London that could give a very different outlook to issues than a voice of the suburbs publication.

Interesting times…

Hat-tip for the map: Diamond Geezer

It’s true that the context for the motion, proposed by the Society Chiropodists and Podiatrists, was employers who have dress codes that mandate high heels for women, but the short version of motion as passed was simply that “high heels… are completely inappropriate for the day-to-day working environment,” and the tenor of the debate – as indicated by the quotes used by our columnist – was hostile to high heels generally. It was this that she was primarily responding to (indeed the tone of the motion and debate provoked similar reactions from columnists in the Independent on Sunday, Guardian and elsewhere.) However, I will ensure that the context of the motion is made clear in our archived and internet versions.

And indeed, the story that I had spotted has now been updated to read:

Unwittingly I had strayed into a war zone: this week the TUC said it would like to see heels, which it terms “sexist” and “inappropriate”, outlawed in employers’ dress codes.

Result.