Creating the News…

As I’ve said before, I hate polls. Instead of having meaning or relevance, they’re nothing more than a tool for the Media Spin Machine to manufacture news to suit their liking.
I mean, let’s face it, you can get any outcome to a poll just by asking a question in the right way. It’s been proven time and again. Certainly numbers don’t lie, but it’s all in the presentation. Keeping that in mind, consider the following article:
BREITBART.com | Most Americans Plan to Vote for Democrats
Most Americans? MOST Americans?!?! Wait a minute…
First, this survey by AP/Ipsos only polled 789 registered voters. 789. That’s not even a drop in the bucket, let alone a representative sample.
Second, where the hell were these 789 people from—Berkeley?? New York City? Madison, Wisconsin? Some other area of the country that voted for Kerry in the last election? I’ll tell you one thing, it sure doesn’t sound like they surveyed anyone in the Midwest. You know, the area of the country that had all that red on the map? It sounds as though these respondents were cherry-picked pretty well, that’s for sure.
Finally, could the editors at the Associated Press come up with a headline that was conceivably more biased? “Most Americans Plan to Vote for Democrats.” This seems more like wishful thinking on the part of AP writer Donna Cassata than anything else.
Honestly, it sounds like Ms. Cassata started with the premise of Senate elections being tough on the incumbent party in the President’s sixth year in office, and then the Associated Press poll was written around that factoid.
Might the Democrats wrestle some seats in Congress away from the GOP? Sure…that’s definitely possible. I can’t see them losing six Senate seats and fifteen house seats to turn control over…not here in mid-July. Just like the race for President two years ago, polls at this time are still largely manufactured news, and that’s what the AP is doing—creating the news instead of reporting it.
Are Americans unhappy with the GOP-controlled Congress? Many are, yes. However, Americans have shown a strong disapproval of both parties in Congress and that makes this year’s elections anything but a “lock” for either party. One must suppose that’s why the AP is running stories like this one to color public sentiment.
Didn’t they learn their lesson back in 2004?
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com