In the media business, there can be a thin line between making the news and reporting the news. You do an investigative piece, you put it out there. We get that. You own it. At its best, it’s hustle and headlines.
But it gets increasingly problematic these days when so many media outlets are also engaged in high-profile polling. If you’re a flagship newspaper or network/affiliate with designs on staying relevant and competitive in this ever-expanding digital age, you’re probably polling with a partner. Some are more professional than others; some seem more self-promotion than public service. It’s way beyond side-bar material.
In this market, the Tampa Bay Times reported its own poll results–“Romney remains on top” (51-45)–as an above-the-fold, page-one, stop-the-presses news story the weekend before Romney lost Florida and the election.
The variables are significant and range from sampling–from land-line/cell disparities to “likely” voter definition to party, if any, affiliation to more selective call screening–to how questions are phrased and how frazzled subjects are from being constantly bombarded–even by friendly fire. Results can be easily distorted and contradicted–but make for compelling headlines and daily lifelines for MSNBC and Fox, who require constant snapshots to ponder and posture about. No, these are not your parents’ Gallup Polls providing grist for today’s political-speculation mills.
Polling, we are reminded by the polling media, is as much “art as science.” That might be a smidgen presumptuous, because it implies only “artists” and “scientists” are on the case. But what it surely is–is a business. One that can be a useful societal tool of information–as well as a self-promoting, all-too-impactful voice in the cacophony of today’s electoral politics.