Are the questions used in polls by the MSM scewed?

I notice there's no "they're completely scientific and unbiased" option.

I wouldn't actually have chosen that option if it had been available, but I thought the omission was a little ironic.

 

I used to work for a advertising media company. We studied and tested poll questions to determine if they would give skewed results. We did this for large companies. Sometimes they want skewed results and sometimes they really want to know what people think.

It is very difficult to make a poll that is not biased. Just the way a question is worded or the order in which the questions are asked can make a difference. There are hundreds of books written about how to skew polls.

Some polls are designed to give skewed results on purpose and sometimes they turn out that way despite how hard you try to get a good poll.

 

Few responses, but there is no question, on BOTH sides now polls are used as tools. Now Libs...don't be naive and unfair, BOTH sides are masters at it, when POLLS really need to be UN - BIASED!!

Yes our pro-lifers and the National Republicans do skew and carefully word their questions (Tony Shaeffer) but the other side does it all the time too, ESPECIALLY CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and good old UPI and AP, to name a few. Even Harris and the likes do some poor jobs, and when was the last time specific quotation of the question of these polls was ever presented both print and TV ?? I still have a college book titled "How to LIE with statistics". It is a complex but dangerous game all sides do in this media intensive society, it is up to the individual to carefully consider all view points, and intelligently discuss and promote his or her views, and sadly few do this.

 

I'd say that considering the wording of the recent poll questions, I think the polls are done as fairly as possible and do adhere to "scientific and unbiased."

Wording of the polls are a tricky subject of course, and depend on whoever is crafting the polls to begin with.

But comparisg polls put out by the Republican party to polls done by Zogby, or one that would show up in the media is NOT fair.

I have to reiterate this again: the media is NOT liberal. Just because you continue to *say* that they are liberal does not make it so. If you continue to close your ears and call everything that you despise and consider flawed "liberal" then clearly you have no idea what a liberal is.

But lets be clear. you wouldn't be asking us this question and trying to deemphasise the significance of such polls, imnotacrook, if the poll results were more appealing to your own personal views.

 

The most dangerous thing I see is "governance by polls". A "true" democracy is dangerous.

We have already seen the results of the "people" figuring out how they can confiscate the wealth of others by voting.

The "masses" are ignorant (defined simply as not having knowledge...as opposed to stupid) about a lot of things and I don't give a rats a** what their opinion on something is until they have more knowledge....BTW, I fit into this on a lot of things ..i.e cloning and/or stem cell research.

 

I think the poll question is whether the "Main Stream Media" (MSM) does the same thing ... called a "directed poll" in the polling business. Political parties, when doing polling, sometimes do very good polls ... that they never publish. The ones they publish are "directed" for a certain result.

I didn't vote because my choice wasn't up there ... sometimes the MSM does indeed ask the wrong questions in a poll. As someone pointed out, there is no choice in THIS poll to say they are fair and unbiased. There's also no "Some individual media outlets often skew the questions."

 

The questions posed in this pole are the most biased I have ever seen so I can't even vote! Typical right-wing lying through ommission BS!

 

Polls very seldom include my answer. Surprisingly, the poll in this thread actually comes close, though I would not have said they never include my answer. A recent PC poll asked what color our Priuses are, and it included my exact answer. I had a phone call a while back asking about my degree of satisfaction with the service I had recently received at a bank. Pretty straightforward concept, and clearly not for publication: they just wanted to see if their branches were providing good service. And yet at least one-quarter of the questions could not be answered to my satisfaction with any of the choices offered!!!

Maybe I should have included polls in the "hate" thread.

 

I think that with printed material we often give the text a voice that speaks with the tone we're expecting.

For example, if you receive and email from someone with whom you've recently had a heated argument you're going to probably read the text of the email with an argumentative tone of voice because that's what you're expecting. I think that this sort of thing leads to a lot of tension because humans are social animals. We instinctively evaluate things like facial expression, word tone, and body language when communicating. In fact, all three of those evaluations occur on a millisecond time scale. Our comprehension of the actual words being said occurs much more slowly and thus by the time we've understood what was said we've already formed a prelimenary accessment based on the non-verbal communication. In print media these things are lacking but I think we often unconsciously compensate while reading. That can often lead to miscommunications and tension.

 

Tripp: you hit the nail on the head!

 

... that you're a right winger lying through omission? :huh:

 

Alright, this is getting silly. "Tricky Dick" (aka imnotacrook) has brought up a valid point and used a poll of his own making to illustrate the point. MarinJohn's comment really helped drive it home whether he intended that or not. Attacking imnotacrook because his politics don't jibe with yours is obnoxious at best and intolerant at worst.

Sitting in the middle I think that it's hilarious to listen to both the left AND right whine about the media. You can't tell Al Franken from Rush Limbaugh when it comes to that subject.

 

I heard one recently that kind of highlighted the problem. The news report was that the American people must be confused because the same poll found that 85% of the people disagreed with the government violating rights in the war on terror, but 65% of those people supported the portions of the Patriot Act that violated people's rights.

The implication was that the American people are stupid.

But there's at least one other answer. When people hear the term "constitutional rights" they are thinking of the Bill of Rights, and rights specifically ennumerated like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. And people, in other polls, don't put the "right to privacy" that has been inferred from the 14th Amendment (or whereever the heck it is supposed to come from) as important as those rights. They overwhelmingly support looking at the library records for who checks out "How to Make a Bomb", or visits hate or terror sites on the Internet.

So I don't think the poll results are in conflict ... the poll was badly worded, either by incompetence or by desire. A better poll would be to ask the person specifically about rights, and how far they would go down the road of giving up rights in trade for security.

 

FShagan...what you said about the American People and the Patriot Act and security makes perfect sense, the polls ARE the problem. We all can in most cases sort it out, quite nicely I might add. The main MEDIA driven stream on both sides, are the ones trying to marginilize and get people's opinions their way of thinking. Of course everyone wants the Commander in Chief to do all in his power in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, to protect all citizens in this country, that is one of the oath the man takes, all servicemen take the same oath I might add..(the one about enemies foreign and domestic)..people are smarter then most give them credit for, that explains the recent shifts, that one side laments about the most.