Dorothy Bishop – a Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology at Oxford University – yesterday awarded the Orwellian Prize for Journalistic Misrepresentation to Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre. The yearly prize is awarded using a simple points-based system – three points are awarded for a factual error in the heading, two for any in the subtitle and one for those made in the body of the article. The article, published in October and titled: ‘Just ONE cannabis joint can bring on schizophrenia’ scored an impressive 23 points, with 12 points being awarded for the headline alone – which is why the prize has been awarded to the newspaper’s editor, who is assumed to be ultimately responsible for headlines, rather than the author of the article (Tamara Cohen) who is not.
Professor Bishop cited an excellent deconstruction of the Daily Mail article by the Neurobonkers’ blog (which I heartily recommend that you read as it details in depth just how distorted the article is) and when discussing the research paper on which the Daily Mail article was based, concluded:
Suffice it to say, the academic paper is not about cannabis, smoking or schizophrenia. Rather it is about an artificial compound that is not present in cannabis, which was injected into rats, and which led to changes in their brain waves.
The article has been reported to the Press Complaints Commission by Cannabis Law Reform and the UKCIA, both of which have yet to update their respective news feeds with a final response from the PCC. Indeed, the Neurobonkers’ blog claims that ‘the article hasn’t been corrected and the PCC have categorically refused to look at the case’ – although a visit to MailOnline reveals that the headline has been altered. However, the headline is still factually incorrect and the introduction and sub-headings remain unchanged.
The article is part of a long-standing Daily Mail campaign against cannabis that has been covered in depth elsewhere and continues to highlight the need for the Leveson inquiry to ensure that science reporting is another area that badly requires some serious attention.
Featured image credit: Dorothy Bishop.
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It is hard to work out why the Daily Mail should take such a bigoted stance towards cannabis unless it is simply a soft sensationalist target. The more I know about this substance, the more inclined I am to see it in terms of its undoubted medicinal value in addition to its benign nature when compared to tobacco and alcohol. But it is really not the subject matter here – it is merely the scapegoat used to increase sales via falsehoods.
IIRC, the original hate campaign against cannabis was spearheaded by William Randolph Hearst, because he was a heavy backer of wood-pulp paper manufacture as opposed to hemp paper. By demonising hemp for its psychoactive qualities (it’s a very versatile plant), he was able to outlaw its growth as an agricultural crop (in the USA), forcing paper users to rely on his wood-pulp mills.