Article:                                  Heading for the UK:  2m desperate Romanians
Journalist:                            Nick Fagge

Publication:                          Daily Express

Date:                                      19 May 2009

Story Link:                           http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/101338/Heading-for-the-UK-2m-desperate-Romanians-

In his Article 'Heading for the UK:  2m desperate Romanians' (Daily Express,16 May 2009), Nick Fagge makes 2 factually inaccurate claims, and uses this to imply an exaggerated future level of immigration from Romania to the UK.

The story reports on the ‘Youth and their Concerns’ surveyof about 2000 young Romanians.  The findings of that survey were that 1 in 6 of the 18-34 age group would wish to leave Romania, and that 21% of these see the UK as their destination of choice.

Factual Error 1

"AT LEAST two million young Romanians intend to leave their poverty-stricken homeland – with Britain as their first destination of choice, a survey revealed last night."

Wrong

National Census information reports there are a total of 6million Romanians in the 18-34 age group. If we accept the findings of the survey that 1 in 6 of these would like to leave Romania then that amounts to a total of 1 million 18-34 year olds with that intent.

This is half the number Nick Fagge suggests.

Factual Error 2

“Twenty-one per cent name the UK as their preferred destination, meaning up to 500,000 young Romanians want to move here.”

Wrong

Having established that there are only 1 million people inthe 18-34 demographic, if 21% of these were to see the UK as their destination of choice that suggests 210,000 might wish to come to the UK.

Were we even to accept Mr Fagge’s misleading assertion that 21% of 2 million young people were to favour the UK as an immigration destination that would produce a figure of 420,000.

None of the figures used in the article have any basis in fact.

Factual Error 3 and Gross Distortion

“Heading for the UK:  2m desperate Romanians”

Wrong

The survey predicts that up to 1 million young Romanians may wish to leave the country, of which 210,000 see the UK as their preferred destination. This figure is grossly at odds with the headline figure of 2million in the article.  Nor is their any suggestion that these Romanians are ‘desperate’.

Conclusion

In light of these discrepancies we must conclude that Mr Fagge’s intention was to deliberately mislead his readers and to do so with malicious intent.