Matt Taibbi 2

Anoniem heeft een nieuwe reactie op je bericht "Matt Taibbi" achtergelaten: 

Geweldig artikel dat op jouw blog helaas onleesbaar is. Matt Taibi laat ook zien hoe buitengewoon schimmig al die polls van de massamedia zijn en hun beurt de publieke opnie beinvloeden. 
Dat is maar al te gemakkelijk te vergeten. Polling is an industry since the 1930's. Om te besluiten met: 

"Why have the pollsters more than the academics taken the lead in developing electoral standing measures and issue polls? One answer is that the pollsters, much more than the social scientists at the universities, have access to regular nation-wide interviewing setups that provided immediate opportunities for developing and testing answers to issues about polling raised by themselves, by academics, by politicians and by journalists. To be sure, NORC at Chicago University and SRA at Michigan University have been very successful academic laboratories. However, the number of such academic facilities has not grown at nearly the pace of the polling organizations in the private sector. In addition, the latter have felt a pressure of commercial competition in developing their methodology. In recent years the competition between the in-house polls of the American TV-networks and their newspaper partners has been a fertile ground for advances in cost effectiveness, and also for polling methodology with new ways of selecting and contacting the interviewees and extracting results from their answers. " 

En in deze blogpost 'Deception and Public Opinion Polling ' zeggen ze er dit over: 

"Because major polls before the invasion consistently showed at least two-thirds of Americans opposed to attacking Iraq without U.N. approval, one might ask how it became important to ask people so frequently whether they support the invasion once war had begun. The media editors certainly know that, historically, at the initiation of any war, the public view will always appear to shift to support of government policies. This is a well-studied mass "loyalty" effect. By making it look like a surprising shift in public belief rather than an inevitable by-product of government action, the media polls helped generate a "pro-war" movement for the government. Clear Channel went so far as to organize pro-war demonstrations. In actuality, the revulsion at what the U.S. government was doing remained widespread, though somewhat muted and demoralized. Such media behavior empowers right-wing extremism, potentiates attacks on democratic dissent, and weakens the general public perception of the peace movement.

The eagerness with which media conduct polls is a measure of the extent to which relevant news and critical thinking are supplanted by the business of news marketing. Even the more "professional" and "reputable" polling outfits end up as prostitutes to all-powerful government, corporate and marketing forces and, as in the case of the Field Poll, dare not admit that most of what they do is designed to insure the success of their organizations by pleasing their corporate funders and government leaders with beneficial results. "