Saturday, August 21, 2010

On selective disclosure

Steve and Sun Media Watch have thoroughly eviscerated Fox News North's choice to release a three-week-old poll as "news" while claiming it to be the result of events in the meantime. But those obvious problems with today's poll aside, I have to wonder if QMI's obvious intention to operate as the media wing of the federal Cons offers an additional reason not to trust their publicly-released polling.

The issue may not be as frequently discussed in Canadian politics since internal polls aren't generally released to the public. But south of the border where politicians often release internal poll results where it suits their interests, there's a distinction drawn between two distinct types of polls. Media polls are generally seen as relatively more credible, since they tend to be made public regardless of the results: after all, most news outlets would rather take the easy story of reporting on new poll results than suppress anything to serve a political master. In contrast, party/candidate polling is taken with due skepticism since it's never released unless it helps the source.

But what happens if a media outlet were to decide that it wanted to use its polling resources to create a steady supply of good news for its preferred party? It would seem to be simple enough to commission multiple polls, releasing only the ones that serve the interests of its political masters. And given that QMI is willing to be dishonest about the timing and interpretation of the poll it released today, would anybody be surprised in the least if it was also the first news outlet in Canada to decide that it's only going to release poll results that favour one side?

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