It is unlikely that the polls were constructed to serve a political agenda. The bias, if it exists, is probably more subtle. One possibility is that the pollsters are aware of their symbiotic relationship with the news media. The media disseminates their work. Two of the questions reported in the article straightforwardly framed the questions in terms of information received by the respondent from the media. They measured opinions of the reporting on the policy, not the policy itself. Perhaps inadvertently, the pollsters focused on the business of their media outlets rather than the pure policy question.Really!? It seems to me that the author goes out of his way to excuse mainstream media's way of dis-informing the rabble. Don't they always use subtle methods?? Clearly today's propagandists are more sophisticated than Goebbels.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Are Faulty Polls Driving Policy on Climate Change?
from New Deal 2.0. The author finds discrepancies in US poll results regarding opinions on climate change. Looking at the questions asked by some pollsters, he finds that the questions were framed in such a way as to give results that mainstream media could use to support establishment views.
