Bullsh*t survey proves bullsh*t surveys are bullsh*t

So far, at least of my predictions about what you would read in The Bulletin over the holiday period seem to have come true.  By my count, numbers 1, 3, 7 and 12 have been ticked off already with No 9 getting fulfilled today with the headline Victims pay for crime:  Townsville region courts are sentencing criminals too leniently, a survey says.

Of course the data that this and the earlier ones base their conclusions on are totally meaningless - they only tells us about the views of that proportion of the population who read the Bulletin and could be bothered to then fill out and send off a survey form.  To conclude or propose that people who read the Bulletin are like everyone else is a nonsense.

True to form though, the Bully report this bullsh*t as fact and on that basis spin a story about the need to get tougher on sentencing - including by interviewing the authoritative voice of the Townsville Residents Against Crime group (see: 0.01% of Townsville citizens can't be wrong).

The whole thing is nonsense (but dangerously so) and no more honest or valid that this press release accompanying the release of Blogging Townsville's own online poll:

POLL SHOCK:  Murdoch's Townsville Bulletin doomed

An international survey released today reveals fatal reader anger about Rupert Murdoch's most peripheral outpost.

The Murdoch empire was rocked today with the release of a world wide Internet survey of attitudes towards the Townsville Bulletin

Globally, over 70% of respondents described The Bulletin as a shocker or as embarrassing.  A further 11.5% of respondents had never even heard of The Bulletin.

It is thought that the five respondents who indicated that they viewed the paper as Rupert's pride were the only staff remaining at the Bulletin and were sucking up as hard as they could.

The two votes describing the Bulletin as 'cerebral' are being investigated as it appears that they were sent from the same computer in the Townsville Bulletin Editor's office

Note to The Bulletin:
Next time try Googling "perceptions of crime" - No. 2 on the 269,000 long list is this little number, for example:  (Mis)perceptions of crime in Australia - Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice, Brent Davis and Kym Dossetor, Australian Institute of Criminology, July 2010.   To save you time, you can even download the paper here (pdf 1.29 MB)

PS:
Any ideas for a new poll topic??????