Polls: When Measuring is Manipulating
by Norman Solomon
Dissident Voice
October 17, 2002
Before
decisions get made in Washington -- and even before most politicians open their
mouths about key issues -- there are polls. Lots of them. Whether splashed
across front pages or commissioned by candidates for private analysis, the
statistical sampling of public opinion is a constant in political life.
We may
believe that polls tell us what Americans are thinking. But polls also gauge
the effectiveness of media spin -- and contribute to it. Opinion polls don't
just measure; they also manipulate, helping to shape thoughts and tilting our
perceptions of how most people think.
Polls
routinely invite the respondents to choose from choices that have already been
prepared for them. Results hinge on the exact phrasing of questions and the
array of multiple-choice answers, as candid players in the polling biz readily
acknowledge.
"Slight
differences in question wording, or in the placement of the questions in the
interview, can have profound consequences," Gallup executive David Moore
wrote a few years ago in his book The Superpollsters. He observed
that poll outcomes "are very much influenced by the polling process itself."
And in turn, whatever their quality, polling numbers "influence
perceptions, attitudes and decisions at every level of our society."
In the
process, opinions are narrowed into a few pre-fabricated slots. The result is
likely to be mental constriction in the guise of illumination.
"Opinion-polling
as practiced in the United States ... presents itself as a means of registering
opinions and expressing choices," media critic Herbert Schiller noted
three decades ago. His assessment of polling remains cogent today: "It is
a choice-restricting mechanism. Because ordinary polls reduce, and sometimes
eliminate entirely, the ... true spectrum of possible options, the
possibilities and preferences they express are better viewed as 'guided'
choices."
Mainstream
polls are so much a part of the media wallpaper that we're apt to miss how
arbitrarily they limit people's sense of wider possibilities. And we may forget
that those who pay the pollsters commonly influence the scope of ideas and
attitudes deemed worthy of consideration.
In his
book The Mind Managers, Schiller pointed out: "Those who
dominate governmental decision-making and private economic activity are the
main supports of the pollsters. The vital needs of these groups determine,
intentionally or not, the parameters within which polls are formulated."
When
the U.S. government takes military action, instant polls help to propel the
rapid-fire cycles of spin. After top officials in Washington have engaged in a
well-coordinated media blitz during the crucial first hours of warfare, the TV
networks tell us that most Americans approve -- and the quick poll results may
seem to legitimize and justify the decision to begin the bloodshed.
In the
case of the Bush administration's plans to launch an all-out attack on Iraq,
the U.S. military build-up in the Persian Gulf region has run parallel to a
sustained propaganda campaign on the home front during the past several months.
Even so, the extent of public support is foggy.
At the
end of September, a murky picture emerged from an article in the Washington
Post by the director of the big-bucks Pew Research Center for the
People and the Press. "Almost all national surveys this year," Andrew
Kohut wrote, "have found a broad base of potential support for using
military force to rid the world of Saddam Hussein." Yet such generalities
can be deceiving. Kohut reported that the Pew Center's latest poll "found
that 64 percent generally favor military action against Iraq, but that withers
to 33 percent if our allies do not join us."
According
to a recent CBS News poll, 51 percent of Americans
say that Hussein was involved in the 9-11 attacks. But there's no evidence for
that assertion. So, as in countless other cases, the failures of news media to
clearly convey pivotal matters of fact -- and the unwillingness of journalists
to challenge deceptive claims from the White House – boost the poll numbers for
beliefs that lack a factual basis.
Polls may seem to provide clarity in a confusing world. But all too often they amount to snapshots taken from slanted angles.
Norman
Solomon's latest book is The Habits of Highly
Deceptive Media. His syndicated column focuses on media and politics.
Email: mediabeat@igc.org