The Daily Telegraph’s defence of Boris Johnson’s false Brexit claim is an immense self-own
The Daily Telegraph has been censured by the press regulator over a Boris Johnson claim in which the prime ministerial wannabe claimed a no-deal Brexit was the most popular option among the British public.
The paper has been forced to correct the claim made by Johnson in a Telegraph column in January, after a statistician from Reading complained to industry regulator, Ipso.
NEW: IPSO has upheld a complaint against a Boris Johnson column in the Telegraph saying polls showed no-deal Brexit was the preferred option “by some margin” after it could not provide any data to back the claim pic.twitter.com/A9mp9BIO7K
— Press Gazette (@pressgazette) April 12, 2019
Quite right too. Except the thing that really caught people’s eye was the Telegraph’s defence of Johnson and what he has to say each week. It said Johnson was
‘entitled to make sweeping generalisations based on his opinions and that the complainant had misconstrued the purpose of the article – it was clearly comically polemical, and could not be reasonably read as a serious, empirical, in-depth analysis of hard factual matters.’
And this is what people made of that.
Amazing statement from the Telegraph on Boris Johnson's false claims in a recent column.
Apparently he is "entitled" to make things up because his articles cannot "reasonably be read as a serious, empirical, in-depth analysis of hard factual matters."https://t.co/djCwHqrUwa pic.twitter.com/NSaW8iD5xG
— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) April 12, 2019
Wow, the *official Telegraph line* on Johnson's columns is basically that it's fine for him to lie because they're jokey and "could not be reasonably read as a serious, empirical, in-depth analysis of hard factual matters”. https://t.co/EeTsBErhRk
— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) April 12, 2019
Can't get over the idea that The Telegraph's defence of Boris Johnson' journalism is that no reasonable person would take him seriously. pic.twitter.com/BKyRXpzAiM
— Robert Hutton (@RobDotHutton) April 12, 2019
The @Telegraph's defense of why it's OK for Boris Johnson to invent his own facts in his articles for them is genius.. https://t.co/hjIqQQoosI pic.twitter.com/QFrRI0ugIx
— Jonathan Portes (@jdportes) April 12, 2019
Telegraph’s official position: our leading Op-Ed writer is a self-evident joke. https://t.co/AMS7EpUbBD
— Tom Sutcliffe (@tds153) April 12, 2019
The only defence the @Telegraph could muster for @BorisJohnson writing total bollocks about the British public's feelings about Brexit is that he's an utter knob nobody was going to take seriously. Mr Johnson would like to be Prime Minister. https://t.co/WnoUBCMcpx
— Jay Rayner (@jayrayner1) April 12, 2019
So the Telegraph pay Boris Johnson £275,000 to be a clown writing misleading generalisations they don’t think people will believe? We’ve heard it all now. pic.twitter.com/s2ZUUyNiDB
— Brexitshambles (@brexit_sham) April 12, 2019
£5 a word. https://t.co/BkMGYeS9VB
— James Ball (@jamesrbuk) April 12, 2019
This is a breathtaking self-own https://t.co/Z7N2YZitf4
— Nooruddean (@BeardedGenius) April 12, 2019
