This is the sort of journalism we need more of in this country. Every time I read a story that quotes some poll, or hear a pundit throw numbers out there as if they were hard facts, I always shout in my head “What was the question?” “Were there follow up questions to clarify the respondent’s position?” “Who ran the poll, and whom did they ask?”
We are way too lazy nowadays to question the numbers people throw at us on a regular basis. And even the top respected journalists are guilty of it. I hear guests get away with throwing questionable statistics into discussions on This Week or Meet the Press all the time, and the hosts never follow up to ask where those numbers come from. They have fact checkers that you can go look up online after the show sometimes, but they know almost no one does that.
When you hear that the majority of Americans disapprove of the recent Health Care reforms, for instance, what is the next logical question in your head? Pundits, even liberal ones, have been using that statistic to suggest that people didn’t want health care reform, that it was a mistake for Obama to pursue it. The first question I want answered, but that no one ever asks, is “why didn’t they approve it?” “What was it they didn’t approve?” Was it because the bill went too far towards some grand Socialist takeover, or was it because the reforms were far too weak, and most of us wanted more? Knowing the answer to that question, it would seem to me, would have a significant impact on how we interpret that number.
My guess is that while some people were duped into thinking Health Care reform was tantamount to communism, far more of us disapproved because the reforms didn’t do nearly enough. (It was, after all, merely a watered-down version of the bills the Republicans used to propose in the 80s. Hardly what most would consider socialist.) And Obama was elected by a pretty big margin while promising big health care reform just a few years ago. But when you lump everyone who disapproves into one large group without asking why, you can paint whatever picture you like with it.
We liked health care the way it was, they want us to believe. Did we? Then why did we elect a president who promised to change it?
This method of painting any number to suit your political agenda is one of the primary instruments being used by our political parties to justify policies that are not serving the majority of people. As long as a poorly interpreted poll result suggests that most people want this or that, leaders can enact policies to suit their own interests, or those of their donors, while convincing us that it’s what “most” people want. Meanwhile, those of us paying attention are becoming more and more detached, because we are vastly under-represented. Which leads to fewer people voting, which actually helps them get even further away from our own best interests. The fewer people they have to convince, the easier it is for them to get more extreme.
We need to start demanding more accurate interpretations of polls. We need to start making journalists accountable for the opinions they present as facts. Otherwise, we’re just going to keep getting duped into thinking that any of our politicians actually care what we really think and are acting in our best interests.
