A new study by the Pew Research Center takes a look at how cell phones are influencing poll results. Many polls exclude households without landlines, currently 1 out of every four households in the US. It doesn’t take real genius to hypothesize that households without landlines probably represent younger people. Since they’re open to new technology and changing paradigms, they are also, therefore, probably more liberal in outlook. The Pew Center has been tracking the effect of excluding cell phones by conducting parallel surveys using landlines and cell phones. They found a growing Republican bias for polls that exclude cell phones. In 2008, the bias for John McCain was small, 2.3 percentage points for nine polls analyzed. This year, the average bias for Republicans is a whopping 7 points.
According to Huffington Post, the effect of the bias depends on the poll. Results from ABC News/Washington Post, AP/GfK, CBS News/New York Times, Gallup, Kaiser Family Foundation, McClatchy/Marist University, NBC News/Wall Street Journal and Newsweek likely include more Progressive Americans (those that cut the umbilical landline, that is), because these pollsters routinely include cell phone households.
This finding may help explain why it feels to so many of us as if the views and opinions of older Americans are being overrepresented in the press.
Comcast plans to expand its empire. Another megacorporation is going to get more mega.
I may be the only person in this country who still believes we have anti-trust laws on the books. Is anyone looking out for the consumer? For the “free trade” and competition we have been hearing so much about lately?
Then again, maybe, just maybe, I’m not the only one. According to Bloomberg, the Obama administration is eyeing the proposed merger with skepticism. America’s best and brightest put their heads together on this one and concluded that consolidation of America’s already massive communications companies may “thwart competition.” Score one for rational thought.
Finally, someone is standing up to Fox News. President Obama will not appear on Fox News for the rest of this year as a protest of the network’s biased coverage. The White House communications director called the network a “wing of the Republican Party” according to NY Daily News. Don’t take Obama’s word for it. Time and again, FOX ‘s obvious bias has been documented. Most recently, FOX has been overwhelmingly giving time to opponents of health care reform. A Media Matters study found that opponents of reform outnumbered supporters or those with a neutral opinion 6 to 1 over a 2-day period in August. Viewers of FOX news are far more likely to be misinformed about health care (Think Progress), and during the Iraq war, they were far more likely to harbor misconceptions about important issues (Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War, WorldPublicOpinion.com.)
MoveOn is circulating a petition urging all Democrats to follow the President’s example and boycott FOX by making no appearances on the network. It’s not as if participation in network interviews really helps make opposing viewpoints heard. FOX reporters simply out-shout those with whom they don’t agree, or even shut off their mics. Sign the petition, and, of course, do yourself a favor: don’t watch FOX.
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