Isn't it annoying when people lie to you? And it is especially annoying when the person or party telling the lie has been entrusted to tell the truth.
I have always had problems trusting newspaper articles 100%. So whenever I read the papers, I have this strange habit of discounting the reports by a certain percentage. I have long adopted a discount factor of between 10% to 20%. For example, if it is reported that 100 people have died in a tragedy, I would give it a margin of error of 10%-20% so that in my mind I see between 80 to 120 people have died in the tragedy.
Last night I posted an article entitled "Animals in us" in connection with the BERSIH demonstration last Saturday. In it, I provided a link to an article I extracted from The Star which gave a figure (which it in turn obtained from the Inspector-General of Police) of about 4,000 demonstrators.
This morning, a friend, having read my post, was kind enough to send me some links which reveal a far larger crowd in the BERSIH march — 40,000 instead of 4,000 (Check out the links here and here). That works out to be a mind-boggling 90% discount factor. It gives us an idea of how unreliable the information by the police chief is; and it also shows the level of reliance one can place on The Star.
1 comment:
That's why I never believe 100% everything I read in the papers. The so-called "freedom of press" is not so free after all...if you know what I mean!
My dad had an accident, and there was a small article in the papers. Needless to say, all the facts were screwed.
PS: Dad's recuperating so will be ok.
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