December 23, 2011

All I want for Christmas …

… is for the media to stop making hackneyed stories out of self-selecting and meaningless ‘polls’ hawked by companies seeking free profile.  Yes, vast expanses of white space between the ads need to be filled, but really … This is in today’s Herald:

Auckland most hostile city – by a country mile

It’s the city many past the Bombay Hills love to hate and now Auckland has topped a poll to find the least friendly places in New Zealand. The city led the online poll by Yahoo NZ Travel with 50 per cent of the 4231 votes.

Thankfully Mayor Brown pointed out (and the paper reported) that  a “scientific survey” found the opposite.

The full story is here.

 

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Atakohu Middleton is an Auckland journalist with a keen interest in the way the media uses/abuses data. She happens to be married to a statistician. See all posts by Atakohu Middleton »

Comments

  • avatar
    Thomas Lumley

    And this is a week with no shortage of national and international news, and with well-worn seasonal themes available if you need to stretch the content a bit.

    13 years ago