I always find myself wondering how phone polls can really be very representative of the average American, because almost everyone I know is in the habit of screening their calls pretty strictly. Two decades of constantly getting unwanted telemarketing calls, & some dodging debt collectors, means most reasonable people aren’t answering calls from numbers they don’t recognize.
The people still answering a random phone call might be desperately lonely and bored, and/or lack the basic reasoning skills that have EVERYONE ELSE screening their calls.
Ike: what good and authentic is a poll taken exclusively by telephone today which concludes that young voters have abandoned Biden? And with a MOE of 4.8?
So here's a question. How do we go about bending the media coverage so that this election is not covered like any other "normal" election? The participants are not equal - one is the president of the country and the other is under civil and criminal clouds the likes of which we have never seen. So given we Democrats don't have our own version of Fox to propogandise 24 hours a day we are at the mercy of NBC, CBS and ABC national outlets to draw the distinction between Biden and Trump and quite frankly that sure as hell is not being done. Any ideas on how to positively change this current situation would be appreciated.
Pollsters' are giving their corporate news customers precisely what they want, i.e., the "four ways in which the regular drumbeat of horse race surveys from the most respected media institutions is changing the course of events by making news instead of reporting it."
Look. I don’t answer polls no matter what their source purports to be. The first time one phones me, long before I could see an id for the caller, I just didn’t trust it was legit in my terms. So I politely said no thank you. And when I first received snail mailed polls from organizations I donated to or the DNC which knew I was a registered Democrat and tried to be a “good citizen” by working my
Can you tie the media's motivations here to commercial incentives? Does horse-race coverage -- or any type of political reporting that treats elections as sporting events -- drive higher ratings/readership and therefore revenues for these outlets?
The Times has resolutely learned nothing, as its publisher made clear in a long essay defending the paper’s traditions last summer. Among other howlers (“we would rather miss a story than get one wrong”), he claims that the Times has rigorously separated opinion from reporting (has he never read a Peter Baker news analysis?). As he blithely dispenses with one line of critique after another, he fumbles with but never quite unravels the Gordian knot of the paper’s contradictory claims of being independent of its subjects while also having an influence on them. https://www.cjr.org/special_report/ag-sulzberger-new-york-times-journalisms-essential-value-objectivity-independence.php
I always find myself wondering how phone polls can really be very representative of the average American, because almost everyone I know is in the habit of screening their calls pretty strictly. Two decades of constantly getting unwanted telemarketing calls, & some dodging debt collectors, means most reasonable people aren’t answering calls from numbers they don’t recognize.
The people still answering a random phone call might be desperately lonely and bored, and/or lack the basic reasoning skills that have EVERYONE ELSE screening their calls.
Ike: what good and authentic is a poll taken exclusively by telephone today which concludes that young voters have abandoned Biden? And with a MOE of 4.8?
So here's a question. How do we go about bending the media coverage so that this election is not covered like any other "normal" election? The participants are not equal - one is the president of the country and the other is under civil and criminal clouds the likes of which we have never seen. So given we Democrats don't have our own version of Fox to propogandise 24 hours a day we are at the mercy of NBC, CBS and ABC national outlets to draw the distinction between Biden and Trump and quite frankly that sure as hell is not being done. Any ideas on how to positively change this current situation would be appreciated.
Excellent article. This has been weighing on my mind and your articulation has helped me process my thoughts.
This is incredible piece! I will forward it on to as many people as possible. Thank you.
Superb! I am recommending in my newsletter this evening. Keep up the good work!
Pollsters' are giving their corporate news customers precisely what they want, i.e., the "four ways in which the regular drumbeat of horse race surveys from the most respected media institutions is changing the course of events by making news instead of reporting it."
Feature, not bug.
Look. I don’t answer polls no matter what their source purports to be. The first time one phones me, long before I could see an id for the caller, I just didn’t trust it was legit in my terms. So I politely said no thank you. And when I first received snail mailed polls from organizations I donated to or the DNC which knew I was a registered Democrat and tried to be a “good citizen” by working my
Can you tie the media's motivations here to commercial incentives? Does horse-race coverage -- or any type of political reporting that treats elections as sporting events -- drive higher ratings/readership and therefore revenues for these outlets?
The Times has resolutely learned nothing, as its publisher made clear in a long essay defending the paper’s traditions last summer. Among other howlers (“we would rather miss a story than get one wrong”), he claims that the Times has rigorously separated opinion from reporting (has he never read a Peter Baker news analysis?). As he blithely dispenses with one line of critique after another, he fumbles with but never quite unravels the Gordian knot of the paper’s contradictory claims of being independent of its subjects while also having an influence on them. https://www.cjr.org/special_report/ag-sulzberger-new-york-times-journalisms-essential-value-objectivity-independence.php
Commentary on making v reporting news is spot on. People are parroting the click bait without considering the conditions we are facing.