Wednesday, October 20, 2004
An Example of CNN’s Hack Political Reporting
Since When is One Source Good Enough?
Ok, I’m actually backing up my criticism of CNN, or at least my affinity for John Stewart’s criticism of CNN’s political coverage. Like many of you, I love looking at all the possible electoral vote outcomes and CNN has a pretty good clickable map where you can explore various ‘battleground states.� But here’s the rub. For each state they have a nice little poll chart that shows who’s running a head in that state. Take for example Pennsylvania
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/special/president/showdown/PA/
Note the pleasing graph that shows Bush up by three points. But wait, this poll is from late September.
Now, click on the PA poll round up
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/special/president/showdown/PA/polls.html
and you’ll see that in every poll since September, Kerry is either leading Bush or they are tied.
The same thing for Florida, where CNN shows Bush with a 9-point lead. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/special/president/showdown/FL/
But here again this data is from late September and a host of other polls shows a much closer race. In fact, the CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll seems to stick out among the others which demonstrate a much closer trend.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/special/president/showdown/FL/polls.html
So what’s my point? That CNN is lazy or too wedded to their own polling system and ignoring a host of other polls that show a narrowing trend for the race. I don’t think it’s bais as much as it’s laziness and maybe arrogance, but then CNN may think their poll is the most accurate…we shall see.
And you know, it’s not that they show Bush in the lead that bothers me at all, I don’t care. What bothers me is that they are reporting month old information as news and ignoring other credible sources of information.
A lot of both conservative and liberal bloggers have been very critical of the gallup poll methodology however.
Ok, I’m actually backing up my criticism of CNN, or at least my affinity for John Stewart’s criticism of CNN’s political coverage. Like many of you, I love looking at all the possible electoral vote outcomes and CNN has a pretty good clickable map where you can explore various ‘battleground states.� But here’s the rub. For each state they have a nice little poll chart that shows who’s running a head in that state. Take for example Pennsylvania
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/special/president/showdown/PA/
Note the pleasing graph that shows Bush up by three points. But wait, this poll is from late September.
Now, click on the PA poll round up
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/special/president/showdown/PA/polls.html
and you’ll see that in every poll since September, Kerry is either leading Bush or they are tied.
The same thing for Florida, where CNN shows Bush with a 9-point lead. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/special/president/showdown/FL/
But here again this data is from late September and a host of other polls shows a much closer race. In fact, the CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll seems to stick out among the others which demonstrate a much closer trend.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/special/president/showdown/FL/polls.html
So what’s my point? That CNN is lazy or too wedded to their own polling system and ignoring a host of other polls that show a narrowing trend for the race. I don’t think it’s bais as much as it’s laziness and maybe arrogance, but then CNN may think their poll is the most accurate…we shall see.
And you know, it’s not that they show Bush in the lead that bothers me at all, I don’t care. What bothers me is that they are reporting month old information as news and ignoring other credible sources of information.
A lot of both conservative and liberal bloggers have been very critical of the gallup poll methodology however.
