the pew research center released the findings of a poll regarding hurricane katrina. i quibble with the nature of the poll (glancing reference to state and local governments), but i've already voiced my general displeasure about polls before.
my skepticism of this poll stems from the sampling which yielded results outta whack with reality. despite the fact that fox news ratings have been ~30%-40% higher than cnn's, 31% in pew's sample cite cnn as the main source of info about katrina--~40% more than the 22% fox news garners.
pew would have to have quite a narrow, targeted sample to yield such results.
and surprise! surprise! suprise! it does....
examination of the the demographic breakdown reveals 40% more self-identified democrats than republicans despite the fact that national party registration is essentially split between republicans, democrats and independents.
when a poll oversamples those that have less than positive feelings for bush, it may make for good headlines, but not necessarily relevant results.
update ~530pm: media bistro's always good tvnewser tallies recent cable news ratings
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
There's more too it that a poll sample issue.
ReplyDeletePolling has an innate bias toward the "first thing that pops into people's mind" The Pew Research consistently show CNN with a higher ID factor for news coverage.
But there is a difference between a poll and ratings.
This is a long read, but the last couple of paragraphs sum up why Fox continues to win.
http://the-rail.blogspot.com/2005/09/who-is-winning-cnn-or-fox.html