NEWS: 250% OF TEENAGERS CARRY A KNIFE AND STAB PEOPLE DAILY

That might aswell have been the headline on this BBC news article. Ok, they really titled it " 'A fifth of teens' carry a weapon" but lets look at the actual article?

Almost one in five teenage pupils surveyed for a police study said they had carried a weapon in the past year.

Oh so it's "have carried a weapon at least once in the last year"? Not quite the same as "carries a weapon" which implies regularity.

Some 60% of those who carried a weapon said they did so for self-defence, while 30% said they had done so during activities with the Scouts or cadets.

So almost a third of these "teenager carrying a knife cases" were when they were in the SCOUTS OR CADETS? Probably cutting bits of rope or something. Now some would say that slightly skews the statistics if they're counting any teenager that has touched a knife in the last year as "carries a knife". Strangely though, it seems that is exactly how they gathered their statistics.

Only 20 of the youngsters surveyed admitted carrying a weapon for the purposes of an attack.

That's out of a sample of 1,426, which means 0.01% of teenagers have carried a knife with the intent to attack someone.

It's so ridiculous how the media get hold of a certain issue and just grab it and run with it. I'm sure knife crime is just as bad as it's always been, probably not more or less, but a streak of high profile stabbings get everyone worked up and worried, and its like they decided they needed the headline "A fifth of teenagers carry a knife" so they wrote that first and then tailored the statistics to match their conclusions. How else do you explain a survey showing that 0.01% of teenagers have carried a knife with intent to harm becoming "A fifth of teenagers carry a knife"?