Regulating The Press
Given that my readers are comfortable with all kinds of regulation I wonder if they would support regulating the press. For example, the NYTimes recently “reported”:
Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
However, as Noel Sheppard from NewsBusters notes, the NYTimes negelcted to include that their poll heavily over sampled Obama supporters.
As can be plainly seen on page 7 of the poll’s data, only 73 percent of respondents divulged who they voted for last November. 48 percent said Obama, 25 percent McCain.
What this means is this poll surveyed 66 percent Obama supporters versus 34 percent McCain.
As the final tally last year was 53 percent to 46 percent, this poll WAY oversampled Obama voters.
This prompts Noel to argue:
Honestly, stuff like this should be illegal and any news organization found doing it should be significantly fined.
In any industry you could name, such deception of the public would meet with very serious consequences.
Why are so-called news outlets allowed to get away with such obvious deceit with total impunity?
Given, that the NYTimes were less than forthright in reporting this poll honestly, would you favor regulating the press so that this shoddy reporting was punishable by fines.
Personally, I would not accept such regulation, but it’s hard to see on what grounds some of my readers would argue against such regulation, when they want to regulate corporate advertisements. On what grounds does one discriminate between deceptive advertising and deceptive news reporting? Why should one be regulated and the other left alone?
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:13 pm
1.) Who wants to regulate corporate ads? Which ones?
2.) The NYT provided the source they were citing. No news agency can stand by the 100% accuracy of their sources nor should they have to. No news agency can possibly explore each confounding factor that could contribute to their sources being unreliable, which is why their is a market for media watchdogging.
3.) Only 73% of the respondents reported who they voted for. That’s not even 3/4. Drawing comparisons between actual election numbers and numbers in this poll is not appropriate given the lousy numbers of those reporting voting behavior. Noel Sheppard cannot predict what the real percentages are of those that did not report. He is making the assumption that they follow the same numbers as those that did. If you buy that as appropriate, you are making an even more silly argument than suggesting that this poll is valid.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:35 am
Ads for tobacco, alcohol, prescription drugs are already regulated, as is all of broadcast network tv.
Don’t apologize for the NYTimes. They insert bias and opinion into their supposedly objective news, referring to a half-baked poll and implying that it is a representative sample of Americans, when it clearly isn’t. If I wanted opinion veiled in “objective reporting” I’d watch Fox News.
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Can’t we all just agree that each media source is NOT objective. I don’t apologize for NYT - they have an agenda. But, I can’t condone the analysis from Noel Sheppard either.