Fox News, “Fair and Balanced”?

I don’t understand how any (supposedly) responsible news organization could do the things that FOX has done. Furthermore, I don’t see how they could honestly call themselves “fair and balanced” — their slogan — after all the stupid things they’ve done and continue to do.

I’m gonna focus on one thing in particular (and hopefully destroy them on it): biased polls and a horrifying abuse of statistics.

If there’s anything that you learn in a basic data management or statistics course, it’s that surveys can be easily engineered to be biased; to produce intentionally skewed results.

That’s what FOX does.

Anger poll

Questions

Take the following poll question as an example:

Does the ‘Reconciliation’ Gambit Make You Angry?

What does that question do, in terms of data collection?

• Sampling bias. The question is clearly targeted at those who feel strongly about the issue, because those are the vocal minorities interested in persuading others of their view. Now, since FOXNews.com is a clearly conservative news source, the visitors to the site will, logically, not include many liberals who would have voted negative to this poll question. As a result, the sample is not representative of the population, producing skewed results.

Choices

What did that question look like on their site?

“You decide”: are the choices biased?

• Yes, yes of course.
• Unsure, but if you’re asking, doesn’t that mean it’s biased?
• No, but maybe it’s biased.

Obviously I’m satirizing their choices. If you read the wording of each option, TWO of the options support the data that FOX wants to collect.

Since when did unsure agree with yes?

Moreover, since when did no contradict no?! “No, it doesn’t make me angry, but they’re still using a loophole.” That’s definitely a biased choice.

The “Other” Choice

All right, so this is probably the choice that someone would pick if they, like me, disagree with all the options and their wording. What if I think “it doesn’t make me angry because it’s not a loophole, it’s a procedure?”

The problem with that is, other is substantially underrepresented when FOX airs results or makes a big deal of them. Right now, 94% say it makes them angry, and that’s the only data they care about when they’re publicizing the results.

Who cares that some extremist decided to write a lengthy explanation of their choice under “other”? That’s not a statistic that matters.

So the “other” choice is just there to give the poll a guise of fairness.

The Extraneous Text

Everything they’ve posted in front of the poll question is designed to steer voters towards one option. For the question above, they asked:

President Obama unveiled his revised health care reform plan on Wednesday. The buzz word is “reconciliation,’ a rarely used legislative maneuver designed to resolve budget differences but one that could also be used to push through the Democrats’ health agenda by a simple majority vote. Are you angry that Obama and the Dems are resorting to using “reconciliation”?

I added emphasis to the key manipulating words above.

I think it’s plainly obvious that words like “maneuver”, “resorting to”, “agenda” (as in hidden agenda) have subtle connotations that the voter’s subconscious mind picks up on.

UPDATE: How could I have forgotten to analyze the word “gambit”? The concise Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “an action or remark calculated to gain an advantage.” You tell me that isn’t a loaded question.

In Short…

That particular poll was biased. Let’s briefly critique another one.

Victory poll

The question is fine here (except for the ambiguous definition of the term victory), but the choices are terrible. Again, there’s the issue with the “Other (post a comment)” choice because it is far easier for someone to pick another option than to take the effort to write a comment — that choice basically means nothing.

Irresponsible or is it just me?

The “No” option is an exaggeration. 2700 pages, apparently, is a lie (or a gross exaggeration). The official H.R. 4872 (reconciliation) bill is 2310 pages, and the Senate bill previously passed by the Senate weighed in at around 2400.

Sampling bias

Again, this poll will not yield accurate results for three reasons (I’ll admit that they overlap):

1. The visitor demographic of FOXNews.com is largely conservative. This may not be the same proportion as in all of the United States.
2. Furthermore, through the efforts of liberals who are attempting to get their voice heard, young Twitter users are flocking to this poll to vote “Yes”. THESE votes will, again, fail to reflect the population, which is perhaps why this is labelled “not a scientific poll” by their own admission.
3. Lastly, the unsure option is quite unimportant in this poll because those who are unsure, generally, are not the vocal participants in these kinds of forums. A lot of Americans are unsure because they don’t know all of the facts, and this poll simply cannot deal with that part of the population that is underrepresented.

How to spin the results

Currently, “Yes” and “No” are nearly tied at 47% and 49% respectably. What would happen if “Yes” had the majority vote?

Given the wording of the choice, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to claim that “over 95% of respondents believe that the bill is flawed”.

After all, even the “Yes” voters have to concede that it’s “not perfect”.

What is this. Yes, I’ll readily concede that it’s not perfect, but that’s because I like the Canadian system better. There might only be one way to be perfect but infinite ways to be wrong or imperfect, and putting that there doesn’t help anyone determine how to get better health care reform. Moreover, it deprives voters of the chance to vote “Yes, it’s awesome.”

What can we do about this?

Nothing. If “freedom of the press” and “freedom of expression” are interpreted in such an unlimited way, any of these ugly tactics can be defended as their view on things.

Freedoms come with responsibilities, of course, and it is irresponsible for this kind of polling and the kind of news reports that FOX News airs to claim to be “fair and balanced”. Boycotting FOX News doesn’t really work, because one would be leaving FOXNews.com with all the conservatives who would love to dominate their polls.

“Fair and balanced” might well be a joke; it would be a perfect sarcastic tagline for FOX.

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