Daily Finance, an AOL Finance and Money site, is taking FoxBusiness.com to task for a slanted health care reform poll.
Noting that “Fox News has been roundly criticized for selectively citing poll data to make it look like Americans are overwhelmingly opposed" to Democratic health care reform efforts, Zac Bissonnette reports:
The question itself, posted on foxbusiness.com, is straightforward enough: “Will the passage of the health-care reform bill impact your vote in the mid-term elections?”
[...]
Notice anything missing? How about the lack of any option for respondents to say passage of the bill will influence them to vote in favor of those who supported it? That option might come in handy, seeing as, according to a Gallup Poll last week, “Nearly half of Americans give a thumbs-up to Congress' passage of a healthcare reform bill last weekend, with 49% calling it 'a good thing.'”
With no available choice reflecting that position, an apparently commanding 73% of poll-takers elected to criticize the bill. “Not a scientific poll” indeed.
Taking polls, reporting on polls... heck polling in general really confuses the Fox News family.
It was just two weeks ago that numerous Fox News figures were playing fast and loose with a “survey” of doctors on the impact of health care reform on doctor retention, falsely claiming it was published by the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Of course it wasn't true. The NEJM set the record straight saying that the 3-month-old email “survey” was not published in or conducted by NEJM.
Related:
- Media falsely attribute doctor survey to New England Journal of Medicine
- Hannity again distorts Fox poll, claims it shows “79 percent of Americans” think economy “is on the brink of collapse”
- Hours after Fox corrected the record, Beck perpetuates falsehood about doctor “survey”
- After prior falsehood, Fox's Kelly accurately sources “survey” to Medicus, says it is “not a scientific poll”