Page 432 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Publ c Op n on: Are Polls Democrat c? | 11

Indeed, while journalists have long been criticized for a failure to appreciate
the meaning and technical limits of polls, what is more striking is their com-
parative absence in news reporting. It is fairly commonplace for both print and
broadcast news to reference public opinion or to represent the citizenry, but
most of these references are impressionistic and make no use of polling data.
If the news is full of reporters making speculative assumptions about public at-
titudes or “vox pops” reacting to a news story, this is rarely backed up with the
kind of evidence polls provide. Lewis, Inthorn, and Wahl-Jorgensen’s study of
how the public are represented in U.K. and U.S. television news suggests that
only between 2 and 3 percent of references to public opinion in mainstream
news programs involve polling data.
We can see, under these circumstances, how conventional wisdom about
public opinion may have little evidentiary basis (see “Polls and the Manufac-
tured Center” sidebar). Polls that fly in the face of journalistic assumptions, far
from being newsworthy (as we might assume) tend to make little impact. So,
for example, polls show far less support for cutting taxes and public spending
than most journalists usually suggest. Similarly, during the BBC’s coverage of
the shootings at Virginia Tech in April 2007, correspondent Matt Frei suggested
that most U.S. citizens did not support greater gun control—a view that fits a
media stereotype but that is flatly contradicted by most polling data.
In short, there is a very real sense that paying more attention to polls would
indeed, as James Bryce hoped, identify the gap between the public and their
representatives. Whether they would lessen that gap is another matter, although
once it becomes a conspicuous part of public debate, public opinion can be a
powerful force, informing the way in which news stories are framed and played
out. So, for example, media coverage of war tends to be more critical when polls
show substantial public disquiet.
This is not to suggest an empty-headed embrace of opinion polling, more
that we give more credence to the careful use of polling technology. There is
nothing sacrosanct about the answers people give to polling questions, but if
we appreciate the constraints that polls put on public expression, as well as the
informational context in which people respond to them, they can be a powerful
democratic force.
see also Bias and Objectivity; Media and Citizenship; Media and Electoral
Campaigns; Propaganda Model; Public Sphere; Sensationalism, Fear Monger-
ing, and Tabloid Media.
Further reading: Herbst, Susan. Reading Public Opinion. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1998; King, E. and Schudson, Michael. “The Press and the Illusion of Public
Opinion.” In Charles T. Salmon and Theodore L. Glasser, eds., Public Opinion and the
Communication of Consent. New York: Guilford Press, 1995; Krosnik, John. “Question
Wording and Reports of Survey Results: The Case of Louis Harris and Associates and
Aetna Life and Casualty.” Public Opinion Quarterly 53 (Spring 1989); Lewis, Justin. Con-
structing Public Opinion. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001; Lewis, Justin,
Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, and Sanna Inthorn. “Images of Citizenship on Television News:
Constructing a Passive Public.” Journalism Studies 5(2) (2004); Salmon, Charles T. and
Theodore L. Glasser. “The Politics of Polling and the Limits of Consent.” In Charles