On Friday, the Times’ Sam Coates put out a series of tweets about the supposed ‘Labour antisemitism problem’ – an angle the ‘MSM’ continues to push in spite of clear evidence to the contrary – to tout an article by Coates and Lucy Fisher claiming Corbyn is ‘failing to tackle antisemitism’.
The clear evidence to the contrary is research conducted by polling company YouGov for the anti-Palestine group Campaign against Antisemitism (CAA) that antisemitic attitudes have fallen sharply under Corbyn’s leadership – data that were not released by the CAA, but which the SKWAWKBOX exclusively obtained from YouGov.
Neither CAA nor YouGov have any reason to massage figures favourably for the Labour Party.
That series of tweets contains a claim so far from the Times’ own findings that it constitutes fake news – and it was put out as the ‘key finding’ of the article:
The figures show no such thing. Nineteen percent considered it a ‘genuine’ and ‘serious’ problem – while forty-seven percent say it is a genuine problem but has been exaggerated for political purposes.
Sixty-six percent therefore consider it genuine, not nineteen.
In fact, another thirty percent do not say there is no ‘genuine’ problem, but consider it ‘not serious’.
In other words ninety-six percent of Labour members acknowledge there is a problem – and of course any antisemitism is a problem, even though Labour is far better than most other parties and society in general (those CAA/YouGov data again). Of those, only ninteen percent appear not to think it is being politically exploited.
It’s hard to imagine how the narrative put out around the figures could be much less accurate – yet Mr Coates does not appear to have a general problem adding numbers together, as he combines the 47% and 30% figures to arrive at his conclusion that 77% believe it is being exaggerated.
The SKWAWKBOX contacted Mr Coates for comment about the inaccuracy of this emphatically-made ‘key finding’.
He did not respond and the tweet has still – as of 11.53am on Sunday 1 April – not been removed, although for the sake of completeness, it should be noted that he acknowledged to journalist Owen Jones that he should have included the words ‘without qualification’ in his tweet.
However, the misleading tweet has not been deleted.
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