Meanwhile, the Caller reports, 34 percent of respondents thought the government should spend more on anti-poverty programs even though only 27 percent thought they were even somewhat effective. So seven percent of respondents apparently think the government should spend more on ineffective programs. This hints at the problems with the poll itself: asking a bunch of non-experts vague questions with undefined terms will lead to conflicting answers. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and S-CHIP, which provides health insurance for children, are all popular programs. Do the respondents realize they may be talking about those programs when they answer the question? If not, why even write an article about this poll? (Perhaps because the Daily Caller is a conservative opinion website whose staffers and readers likely already believe that anti-poverty programs are ineffective.) If you quickly peruse the article and see the words “anti-poverty programs” and “ineffective,” you may conclude, as Carlson himself apparently did, that such programs actually make poor people poorer, even though there is no evidence contained in the article nor the poll for such a claim.
Journalists are not supposed to merely reflect the public’s misconceptions back to them. They are supposed to correct those misconceptions. But there is a word for this kind of article, and the word is not journalism—it’s propaganda.
I don’t get it, what exactly is your beef with this?
Is it because Tucker Carlson “tweeted” something that was based on an opinion poll and not some scholarly study? If that’s all it seems kind of petty to base an entire article off of on innocuous tweet. Is it because the DC reported on the Rasmussen report and didn’t offer anything else? I can’t see how that would be it either considering this kind of reporting is pretty common in all partisan/ideological news and opinion outlets.
If you quickly peruse the article and see the words “anti-poverty programs” and “ineffective,” you may conclude, as Carlson himself apparently did, that such programs actually make poor people poorer, even though there is no evidence contained in the article nor the poll for such a claim.
This might be a reasonable argument if an alien from Ceti Alpha 5 was brought to Earth and was asked to determine the effectiveness of US “anti-poverty” programs and was given only this one Daily Caller article to base its opinion off of, but I am sure you are well aware that a great deal of trees have died arguing that anti-poverty initiatives have been ineffective and counterproductive. Or maybe you haven’t, I don’t doubt that people who hold these views and have done research coming to this conclusion would be welcome in the kinds of journals you read ..... but they do exist and are very smart.
Did you think that just maybe Carlson and the many of the respondents based their opinion off of a large well established body of work outside this one article?
But there is a word for this kind of article, and the word is not journalism—it’s propaganda.
Three words for you Ben: Journ-O-List .... you didn’t think we forgot about that, did ya?
#1 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Fri 8 Apr 2011 at 02:16 PM
As usual, CJR is absorbed by nit-picking the 'right wing' of the media-political echo chamber while ignoring similar stuff in others.
Case in point, the AP's lead on the judicial election in Wisconsin a couple of days ago, by Todd Richmond, which painted the race as a repudiation of Walker in florid terms. ("Wisconsin voters sent Republican Gov. Scott Walker a clear message with his muscling through restricting union rights . . . "). In the real world, Wisconsin voters have apparently rejected the Democratic candidate for the state Supreme Court despite a late, massive influx of funds for that candidate, and a big turnout push at the polls by highly motivated state workers and teachers.
Richmond later back-tracked, calling the Tuesday elections 'a mixed result'. You don't have to be an expert to guess that if the Democrats and the public workers union don't win this week against Walker in a statewide election, their chances of winning more races on this issue, as time passes and as enthusiasm wanes, is not going to improve. Adding to the appearance of lack of trustworthiness, the AP in March had sued Walker for his e-mails to test his assertion that he had received lots of e-mail support for his union-busting. I wonder how often the AP takes that kind of action against a public offical citing public support - which argument Walker appears to have won. Does CJR know? It would be interesting to find out.
#2 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Fri 8 Apr 2011 at 08:37 PM
The MSM has money to send a gaggle of reporters off fact-checking Palin's book..
But nobody fact-check Obama's books
They had 20 reporters to send to Maine to dig up dirt on Bush's 30-year old DWI, but nobody to track down Obama's cocaine dealer.
CJR had the money to send Paul McLeary to Texas on a quixotic snipe hunt for "Lucy Ramirez" and a 1970-era typewriter capable of rendering MS Word's default font to validate Dan Rather's attempted pre-election takedown, has no money to dig into the JournoList scandal...
#3 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 15 Apr 2011 at 04:53 PM