I’m not sure when this happened, but whenever it was it seems to be an ever more popular pastime to call out what some identify as fake data. Thinkbox does some great research. “It must be biased, look who funds Thinkbox” inevitably pops up in my Twitter and LinkedIn feeds. And on it goes. Newsworks does work to demonstrate the importance of trust in news reporting. “Well, they would, ask yourself who owns their paymasters.” The IPA proves that advertising drives sales and profit. “Why don’t they ever publish anything showing the power and effectiveness of non-advertising channels?” And this one: “BARB data is wrong, unrepresentative, takes no account of any viewing that happens on any device aside from a TV set, and is plainly not fit for purpose.” Needless to say, these arguments are inevitably unsupported by facts, often misinformed, and ignorant of the work that those accused of bias actually do.
Not All Data Is Fake
