No longer can I say that those big national pollsters never ask ME what I think. A very nice lady from a research firm doing a poll for NBC/Wall Street Journal wanted MY opinions. Actually, my wife had answered the phone, but apparently they already had enough women respondents because she wanted to speak to the man of the house. My B.W. thought for a minute and then handed me the phone.
She first asked me the usual right track/wrong track question, which I declined to answer because it is so bogus. I mean, it is generally interpreted as “How good a job is the president doing?” but if you take the question by itself, you have to consider congress, business, the current hot news story, everything. Because the news of the day is almost always bad, the question cries out for a “wrong track” answer and I won’t play that game.
She had about twenty minutes of questions including my choices in the 2008 election, the war in Iraq, abortion, Virginia Tech, race relations, etc. There were no questions on the fired US attorneys (the significance of that is that no one cares about it) nor on Anna Nicole Smith (ditto). Don Imus got a mention in conjunction with the Duke lacrosse team and the economy came up one time in the “What are the two most important issues facing the president today?” question. I take that fact to mean that even the media is now resigned to the fact the economy is doing well.
Several of the questions had no good answer. This was particularly true of those where I was given only two choices and neither reflected my views. I’m curious just how the responses to some of that type of question will be spun.
Rush Limbaugh says that network polls are just the news media’s efforts at reconnaissance to see how well their latest bombing run did and if another attack is required. I think that’s true, but I didn’t notice any obvious media bias or attempts to influence my answers by the order in which the questions were asked, so I’ll have to wait until the results get broadcast starting Tuesday on MSNBC to see how I was manipulated. Actually, since I can’t stand MSNBC, I may have to wait longer than that.
1 comments:
I lean towards Rush's idea but I think it's primarily commercial, not political. I have a feeling that the networks, especially the cable news networks, don't trust the rating services and use the polls as a surrogate to see if you're listening. They don't want your views, they want to know if you'll regurgitate the schlock they dump on the screen.
Using the results as a hook for bogus 'news' stories is just a bonus.
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