I saw a really stupid item from Fox News the other day on MMFA. They were trumpeting the results of a POLL that, they claimed showed that they were more balanced that the other media outlets. As is par for the course with Fox, there are several problems with both the claim and interpretation.
1) The poll was old and it's data contradicted by a more recent poll's data.
2) It polled the political affiliation of the VIEWERSHIP, not the content of their broadcast: It showed that they have a ~50/50 split of Democratic vs. Republicans viewers, while other networks have almost entirely Democratic audiences.
(So... Going by that kind of logic, Eminem would have been BLACK.)
The thing is... I don't think either poll says anything particularly profound about Fox at all. Consider this: The percentage of Democrats to Republicans in this country in somewhere between 50/50 and 60/40, slightly favoring the Democrats. So what this polling data tells ME is that Republicans pretty much refuse to watch anything except Fox, whilst Democrats prefer to get their news and opinion from a variety of sources. That says for more about Republicans that it does about Fox, and it doesn't say much for 'em at that. (No tolerance for Cognitive Dissonance, you see.)
Now... Goofy Polling Data is far from just a problem at Fox. A few weeks (months?) back, I heard a story on NPR. They were reporting on a Poll that saying (something like) 80% of Americans were "angry" with "how things were in Washington." (The numbers may not be right, and I'm paraphrasing the poll, but I hope you get the idea.) Now, they went to cite the conventional wisdom that an angry populace is a bad thing for the incumbent party. Well... that's certainly possible, but do you know what they DIDN'T report? (Or apparently ask as a follow-up question?) WHY are people angry? WHAT or WHO are they ANGRY AT? It certainly could be that everyone pissed at the Democrats and their "socialist agenda." (Which is nonsense, but you wan't hear that on Fox!) It's also just as likely that people were pissed at Republicans for obstructing EVERYTHING and refusing to work with a party that is trying to work with them to solve this country's problems. Are they angry at the direction we're heading, or the fact that we're not going there fast enough?!
And THAT'S the problem with the way polls are conducted and reported. They always leave me with an OBVIOUS and EASY follow-up question (or two) that was either not asked or not reported. And what good is applying conventional wisdom in this way? If you're just going to make the results conform to conventional wisdom, WHY BOTHER DOING A POLL IN THE FIRST PLACE?!
All I can say is you Nailed this one Eddie.Its been my experience that the conservatives I interact with tend to base their arguments on strict ideology, and scientific or vetted scholarly study be damned.If it dosen't fit within their narrow ideological frame work then its rejected and dismissed with the liberal bias canard.Please forgive me I'm not trying to paint all conservatives with a broad brush,I'm only refering to the avowed conservatives I interact with.These conservative tend to be fellow pilgrims traveling the road that the Limbaughs, Hannities,and Becks have directed them to, and tend to spout verbatim what ever, right wing nonsense is popular at the time.And whats really sad is they don't even realize that they are looking through the rose colored lenses that someone else has set astride their nostrils.
ReplyDeletesome one else has set aside their nostrils.
I apologize my above post was in reference to Eddies post on 10-26-09 "Something I've noticed about conservatives"
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments! (Even if they were in the wrong thread. LOL. No prob - We're not sticklers for rules around here! We'll leave THAT nonsense to the conservatives! LOL.) And I totally get what you're saying about the 'broad brush.' IMHO if there are conservatives who don't like being catergorized that way, they ought to be a bit louder when it comes to denouncing Limbaugh & Co. Their silence is their consent. I always hear them say, "[Those guys] don't speak for me!" But then they can't even seem to disagree with them either!
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