Nothing’s usually falsified, per se, it’s more that pollsters have a range of questions and results and one of them is going to “suit” a news agency. Or a PR group, or whatever organization needs the “power of polling results” to move clicks.
For example, we’re in Prime Polling Season, with a huge election coming up, so the polling results are all going to be in the same neighborhood, question-wise, usually. It’s better for corporate news if the race is very close, so all the polls we’ll read about are going to say that.
If a poll came back heavily - lopsidedly - for one candidate over the other, we likely wouldn’t hear about it. Because that would be a problem. They can’t dig into the poll too much they just need a headline out of it.
This is all outside of the methodological problems with polls, it’s just specific to the “uses” that corporate news requires of polls.
I don’t see much evidence of cherry picking polling results, they generally all report their own, or someone like Pew. CNN reports CNN polls, Fox reports Fox polls, 538 reports 538 polls, etc etc. Any person who wishes can check between them, it’s very easy. They usually provide the specific questions asked as well.
I guess it’s ironic that this article doesn’t refer to any polling. No doubt it will come up again and again because corporate news has 24 hours to fill, and outside of gaffes and releases, all they’ve got are talking heads and polls.
Nothing’s usually falsified, per se, it’s more that pollsters have a range of questions and results and one of them is going to “suit” a news agency. Or a PR group, or whatever organization needs the “power of polling results” to move clicks.
For example, we’re in Prime Polling Season, with a huge election coming up, so the polling results are all going to be in the same neighborhood, question-wise, usually. It’s better for corporate news if the race is very close, so all the polls we’ll read about are going to say that.
If a poll came back heavily - lopsidedly - for one candidate over the other, we likely wouldn’t hear about it. Because that would be a problem. They can’t dig into the poll too much they just need a headline out of it.
This is all outside of the methodological problems with polls, it’s just specific to the “uses” that corporate news requires of polls.
I don’t see much evidence of cherry picking polling results, they generally all report their own, or someone like Pew. CNN reports CNN polls, Fox reports Fox polls, 538 reports 538 polls, etc etc. Any person who wishes can check between them, it’s very easy. They usually provide the specific questions asked as well.
I guess it’s ironic that this article doesn’t refer to any polling. No doubt it will come up again and again because corporate news has 24 hours to fill, and outside of gaffes and releases, all they’ve got are talking heads and polls.