An article published by The Daily Mail caused a lot of agitation in the Moldovan press as this presented the Moldovans as the biggest drinkers in the world, with 17.4 liters of alcohol per capita. In Moldova, the news was disseminated by the local press without much analysis or investigation, say the authors of a fact-checking article of the project Sic!. According to them, even if there are indeed established institutions whose name increases the credibility of information, the Western press has its own niches and the British tabloids like The Daily Mail or The Sun do not enjoy the best reputation. The map plotting alcohol consumption worldwide is a relevant example. This is a commercial posting designed rather to advertise for Vouchercloud than to inform as old data are presented as up-to-date and prognostications as real figures, IPN reports.
The authors of the Sic! article say the so-called study published by The Daily Mail is by far a study. “We quote from the original article: “Discount code provider Vouchercloud.com used World Health Organization data from 2010 to 2015 to plot the surprising world map.”. So, the data are older and only the map is new. Let’s look at the data of the WHO, which is indicated as a source in the article on The Daily Mail. The last report was published by the WHO in 2014, while the figures it contained referred to booze consumption in 2010. According to those data, the Moldovans older than 15 drank 16.8 liters of alcohol on average per person annually.
So, the assertion that the Moldovans sink 17.4 liters of pure alcohol per year, per person in 2017 is simply incorrect, says the Sic! article. At the same time, to the consolation of some and the disappointment of others, according to the same figures, Belarus, not Moldova ranked first. Another aspect that the article authors emphasize is the fact that these statistics refer to persons older than 15, while many news consumers in Moldova got a mistaken impression that the data are per capita.
“The problem does not reside in our spot on this rankings, but in much more worrisome data. According to the WHO analyses of 2012, the indicator “Alcohol-attributable years of life lost”, which was measured on a scale of one (the least) to five (the most) was five in Moldova. The indicator “Drinking style”, which was measured on a similar scale, was four in Moldova,” says the article.
It is regrettable that the local press didn’t dig deep into the erroneous figures presented in The Daily Mail, but presented them as they were. Consequently, the discussions in the public sphere centered on “competitive” (we are the first in at least something) or “defensive” (we don’t really drink as much) aspects, without critically treating the information and ignoring the relevant indicators like those mentioned above, say the authors on Sic!.
The full article in the Romania is available on sic.md. Sic! is a project implemented by IPN News Agency with the assistance of Soros Foundation Moldova.
