“Immigration hasn’t caused crime wave”

Well, that’s the headline the Daily Mail could have used if you read the quotes in their article carefully, along with a subhead of “Action to tackle knife crime amongst immigrants has been a success says top cop”.

But their actual headline is rather different… (and also wrong because the ‘spikes’ comment wasn’t made by a police officer, as again a careful reading of the quotes in the piece shows).

Imagine how much more public opinion on immigration might be moving if more of the press took care to report it accurately.

For more on how headlines gets misused, see my book Bad News.