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 ith
Bernard Goldberg's Bias
making a surprise appearance on the best-seller lists and William
McGowan's Coloring
the News garnering good reviews, the entrenched problem
of media liberalism is receiving a welcome round of attention. Or
at least conservatives frustrated by the predicament described so
well by Goldberg and McGowan are buying books on the subject.
They should
also take a look at Matthew Robinson's excellent new book Mobocracy:
How the Media's Obsession with Polling Twists the News, Alters Elections,
and Undermines Democracy. Okay, I confess: Robinson is a
friend of mine. But his book is very good, and it offers an intelligent
analysis of the uses and abuses of polling. It should not come as
a shock that the media's heavy reliance on this device is simply
another vehicle by which it advances the interests of liberalism.
"Media
polling has started to inhibit free and open debate," writes
Robinson, who wrote the book on a fellowship from the Phillips Foundation.
"Americans have a variety of institutions and principles that
are meant to encourage deliberation and even to run contrary to,
and indeed discourage, the herd-mentality, quick-government fixes
and simplistic solutions advocated in polling by a progressive journalistic
elite. This is a mobocracy: The reducing of a constitutional
republic to destructive and unreflective mobs stoked by selective
polling and reportage."
Robinson provides
dozens of examples of wrongheaded media polling, on everything from
the impeachment of Bill Clinton to last year's tax debate. He also
shows how the polling industry exploits public ignorance, which
is rampant. The questions are often loaded and the answers typically
create the illusion that public opinion is settled. Pollsters offer
the mirage of democratic deliberation, but what they really provide
is an emotional snap-judgment from an uninformed public — one
that media liberals are all too willing to use to their advantage.
Mobocracy
offers a series of sober suggestions: an end to overnight polling,
the exclusive use of "likely voters" as opposed to "registered
voters" or merely "adults," and sample sizes of no
less than 1,000 respondents. These all make sense. The best idea
of all, however, is simply to read this important book.
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