wombat_socho (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wombat_socho) wrote2007-02-20 12:43 pm
wombat_socho) wrote2007-02-20 12:43 pm
Entry tags:
Square pegs in round holes
Jane Galt and her commenters express frustration over an online survey by the Pew Centre that seems bound and determined to shoehorn everyone into a range of predetermined outcomes that don't seem to fit Jane or her commenters very well. None of this really surprises me. The Pew Centre are the same shitheads who successfully astroturfed the campaign finance issue, so the fact that they load the questions and slant the answers is completely unsurprising. The other factor is that there are a lot of people these days who don't fit neatly into anyone's political pigeonholes, and when they respond to typology tests (whether given by Pew or anyone else) they might as well be speaking Serbian.
On a related topic, this is precisely why the popularity of Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney confuses a lot of media people. Most people aren't simple single-issue voters. They have a number of issues that they think are important, and they'll evaluate a candidate based on how he speaks to those issues. For a lot of people, national security is the most important issue, and they don't much care what Rudy's stance is on gays, gun control or transvestism is. They see him as totally hardcore on the war issue, so he's their man. By the same token, Romney's Mormonism doesn't repel evangelicals, because they're smart enough to see that on social issues Mormons and Southern Baptists aren't all that different. Unfortunately for the media people, they aren't smart enough to see that, and they're all like, "LOL WUT?" when they see this. So much the worse for them.
On a related topic, this is precisely why the popularity of Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney confuses a lot of media people. Most people aren't simple single-issue voters. They have a number of issues that they think are important, and they'll evaluate a candidate based on how he speaks to those issues. For a lot of people, national security is the most important issue, and they don't much care what Rudy's stance is on gays, gun control or transvestism is. They see him as totally hardcore on the war issue, so he's their man. By the same token, Romney's Mormonism doesn't repel evangelicals, because they're smart enough to see that on social issues Mormons and Southern Baptists aren't all that different. Unfortunately for the media people, they aren't smart enough to see that, and they're all like, "LOL WUT?" when they see this. So much the worse for them.
no subject
newspapers, so to speak, and some times you can see that in
their coverage.
Very much so, but they seem to have decided that they're better off with a smaller and more socialist/anti-war audience than they would be with a larger, less politicized audience. ISTR seeing somewhere that the only major newspaper in New York that had recorded an increase in circulation was the tabloid Post, which is noted for its pro-war stance, while the Times and Daily News had both taken it in the shorts...and the same is true for most of the other major newspapers in the country. I blame advocacy journalism, which has done far more harm than good these last forty years in that it has irremediably screwed up the press' ability to simply report the damn news as opposed to telling us what we ought to think about it, even if it means leaving out important facts needed to establish context.