Mail on Sunday correction regarding story first appearing in Sunday Times
Categories: Latest News
Monday December 12 2016
The Mail on Sunday published a correction in yesterday’s paper amending a piece of information reproduced from the Sunday Times last week which claimed Muslims were so segregated they believed 75% of the country to be made up of Muslims.
The Sunday Times article, ‘Enclaves of Islam see UK as 75% Muslim, quoted a source who was said to have read the Casey Review and who told the paper, “Certain Muslims, because they are in these communities and go to Muslim schools, think Britain is a Muslim country. They think 75% of the country is Muslim.”
In fact, the Casey report refers to a single instance of a poll conducted by a single school where pupils of Asian ethnicity made a projection about what they believed to be the size of the Asian population in Britain.
The Casey report states: “We were particularly struck by the results of a survey of pupils in a non-faith secondary school with a high Asian population which we were told about on a review visit. Pupils had been asked to identify the percentage Asian population of Britain and their estimates ranged from 50% to 90% (the actual figure is 7%), presumably reflecting their experience in the local community, and a relative lack of knowledge about the country as a whole.”
There is neither mention of ‘Muslims’ in the paragraph, nor are the figures quoted by the Sunday Times an accurate portrayal of the figures cited in the report; ranging from 50 – 90%, not 75%. The fact that the poll results refer to answers from a survey at a single school is hardly a generalizable result and not remotely robust enough to justify the Sunday Times’ misleading headline, ‘Enclaves of Islam see UK as 75% Muslim’.
The Mail on Sunday has since corrected its reproduction of the figures from the Sunday Times article although The Sunday Times published no such correction in yesterday’s paper. Other publications that took their cue from the ST, such as the Daily Express, The Sun and Breitbart have yet to follow the Mail on Sunday’s lead and publish a correction too.
A nudge from Ipso is perhaps in order?