Re: The Media Must Take The Blame.
If you ever get round to reading the classic little book "How to Lie with Statistics" by Darren Hough, you'll be able to see how stats can be manipulated easily enough by simply changing the sample.
Thus "8 out of 10 owners said there cats preferred Whiskas" is entirely true if one expediently ignores asking the follow up question "which 10 owners". If one were to ask sets of legitimately selected random samples of 10 owners the question, then by the laws of averages, one of these sets might actually hit the 80% mark, even though every other set only ever hits eg 30%. It is entirely accurate to then state that your 80% was from a randomly selected sample.
This is, one suspects, what happens when the media cites "the public mood", and people fall for it even though it is the most basic GCSE question asked about bias samples.
Thus the "public mood" could equally be to endorse the behaviour of those who crowded beaches, or are absolutely aghast at it.
When an MP or journalist uses the words "the reality is" or "on average", then there is no doubt whatsoever that figures have been manipulated or that a convenient sample has been chosen.