The number of surveys that news media are placing on their
websites for their online followers seems to multiply daily. Most of the
surveys reflect only the views of the respondents. Since the respondents
self-select to take the survey, the validity of these surveys for the nation as
a whole or even for the universe comprising the audience for the media outlet
is virtually always suspect.
Take for example the Yahoo! survey of which presidential
candidate would receive their vote featured on its web page the day before the
election: 53% of the respondents said they would vote for Romney and only 47%
for President Obama. Of course the actual results were flipped, with Obama
winning 51% of the vote and Romney a mere 47%. Clearly either Yahoo! users or
those who answer Yahoo! surveys are more Republican than the voters.
These quick-and-dirty surveys usually ask one or at the most
a few questions. But even with one
question, they often seem to be making a point as opposed to gathering
information. These media surveys often reduce to attempts to convince the
public of something rather than to gather information. The persuasion comes in how the question and
the answers are phrased.
Here are a few recent examples of advocating an ideology in
the one-question Yahoo! survey, which changes every day or two on its home
page:
Survey Question: Are you planning to shop on Cyber Monday?
Yes, I
don’t like crowds
No, I
prefer to shop in person
The assumption is made that, no matter what, you’re going to
shop for Christmas/Hanukkah/Holiday presents. But what if you’re not shopping
on Cyber Monday because you don’t celebrate holidays, don’t celebrate by
exchanging gifts, are boycotting the holiday, make your own presents or have
already shopped online for the holidays? By giving one and only one reason only
for not shopping on Cyber Monday, the question assumes that the only possible
reason not to shop on the Monday after Thanksgiving is that you are
participating in another way in the great American potlatch of materialism called the Holiday Shopping Season. The
subtext of the question supports the basic American ideology of consumerism.
The next example, also from Yahoo!, is even more
manipulative:
Survey Question: Do you support a tax hike for the
wealthiest Americans?
Yes, it’s
needed to fix the deficit
No, it will
hinder economic growth
We see in the characterization of the “no” answer one of the
great hoaxes that conservative economic writers and pundits have been
perpetrating on the American public for decades: that raising taxes on the
wealthy will hurt economic growth. It’s just not so. The further up the
economic scale you go, the more money you take out of the economy. The wealthy
invest most of their money without investing in new jobs or the economy—for
example, by buying stocks and bonds on the secondary market (where the money
doesn’t go to a company that’s hiring, but to another investor). Every bit of
the money that the government takes in is spent (except what’s used to pay down
the debt, which is owned primarily by rich folk and foreign governments). World
economic history has shown that higher taxes on the wealthy almost always lead
to economic growth and virtually never hinder growth.
The “yes” answer also serves as an ideological shill. There are a great many progressives, including myself, who think the deficit is not such as critical problem, but propose raising taxes on the wealthy to improve our infrastructure of roads, bridges, mass transit, public spaces and education; support the development of new technologies; or help the people hurt by the last six years of deep recession followed by slow growth. The survey question leaves out these option, just as most mainstream and rightwing media and right-wing politicians do: they want to take the ideas of taxing to grow the economy or create a more equitable society off the table because they go against their own mostly false economic notions.
Yahoo! is not the only one that’s trying to freeze the
debate about taxes in right-wing terms. Here is a recent Washington Post online survey:
Survey Question: Would you be willing to pay more in taxes
to help shore up the deficit?
Yes
No
In this case, the only reason given to raise taxes is to pay
down the deficit (which is what I think the imprecise “shore up” means). And
again, there are many people who would be delighted to see their taxes raised
to kick-start the economy or help people in need, but would not want to pay
more in taxes to pay down the deficit at this time. It’s something that the Washington Post doesn’t even want us to bring up, let alone
consider.
The accumulation of little nuggets of propaganda—in these
silly surveys, in the details and assumptions of news stories, in the experts
quoted in articles—allows many false notions to parade around
in the marketplace of ideas as truth. The news media accepts these false
notions and wants us to do the same.
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