Half a record number leave the country

Immigrants=shifty looking brown men standing around
British citizens=smiley smiley whitey whitey people with children

Today we have another case of one story being covered by different right-wing newspapers with surprisingly different results.

The Telegraph has 'Britons quit country in record numbers', which reports in its opening sentence:

The number of Britons emigrating in the 12 months to July 2006 reached 385,000, the highest since present counting methods were introduced in 1991, new figures show.

That's a lot of people leaving the UK. Nearly 400,000. Wow.

The Mail's version has the headline '196,000 out, 574,000 in: Record numbers leaving Britain for new life abroad - as immigration to UK soars'. Reporting the nearly 400,000 leav...waitaminute! It says just under 200,000 - not 400,000! How can the Mail halve the number of people leaving? What gives?

We can find out from the BBC's coverage 'Record number of people leave UK':

Of those who left the UK last year, 196,000 were British citizens while 189,000 were "long-term migrants" who had been living in the UK for more than a year.

So the Mail have disregarded every single migrant who has left the country in the headline and lead-in, the most important parts of the story. That's a little, er, less than honest.

Way, way down in the story - eighteen paragraph/sentences in, we get this withdrawal:

A total of 385,000 people are thought to have left the country, although this figure includes many foreigners who were in Britain temporarily.

dismissing the 'foreigners' who have left in an offhand manner after putting the number who arrived in the headline. There is no separating out and the reader is left to work out for themselves exactly how many 'foreigners' have left.

There's more on these figures to come, but for now there's how you halve the number of people leaving the country. Even if you do withdraw it later.