_________________________________________________________________ VOLUME 3, ISSUE 4 PSYCHNEWS INTERNATIONAL December 1998 -- AN ONLINE PUBLICATION -- _________________________________________________________________ SECTION D: FEATURE ARTICLE A SLICE OF MEDIA PSYCHOLOGY: ON IMPEACHMENT, THE MEDIA, AND POLLING John M. Grohol, Psy.D. Associate Editor _________________________________________________________________ Americans are an odd lot. We thrive on the media, largely television, for its entertainment and informational value. Gone are the days of every city having two major newspapers competing for headlines and local news. Instead, most city newspapers are owned by large media companies, who repackage and cross-promote "news" items across not only their print media holdings, but online, on billboards, and even on local television stations' evening news. More than half the time, the "news" is not actually news, but repackaged bits of consumer information, opinion, or entertainment gossip which run on a constant basis (see the twice-annual sweeps months to understand the bizarre stories which get dragged out on your local television station's newscasts). Actual news is relegated to a few minutes in each national broadcast. We have become a society which not only tolerates this type of mediocre media coverage, but which actually thrives on it, allowing the media to define what is and isn't newsworthy. Whenever a "news event" breaks, the media are on the phones to their polling partners to get some polls going to track "public opinion." This often occurs when the government is going to take some drastic action, or something really big is about to occur in politics (e.g., bombing Iraq, the impeachment of the President). Then the media show over the intervening weeks a careful plot of how "public opinion" has risen or fallen with regard to the "news event." Spin is then applied, according to whichever way the media company wants to portray the poll results. Americans watch or read the news, and see the results of the polls. Their opinions are then influenced by the polls and how the media portray the results. When new polls are taken, the new polling finds these influenced opinions. An opinion snowball effect can be created by this regression. The polls themselves are probably not at fault, although very little is said about the fallacies of such polls and how polls' quality varies greatly, making the generalizability of their results questionable. What is problematic is most media's lack of insight into this phenomenon. The media move from simply reporting events which take place to trying to shape and influence their outcome. Perhaps the effect is so subtle the media don't realize what may be occurring. Or perhaps, more cynically, the media realize exactly what it is they're attempting to do (shape public opinion in their own likeness) and have no moral or ethical dilemma in doing so. A perfect example of this phenomenon cropped up in December 1998, as the hearings of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee wrapped-up and they voted to send the impeachment charges of President Bill Clinton to the full House for a vote. While most polls continued to show strong support for stopping the impeachment process, news organizations began spinning the results of one poll's trend data after gathering only one additional data point. This data point showed that there was a 7% increase in the number of people who wanted to see the President impeached. Yet the results of the poll still showed the vast majority of Americans favoring no impeachment of the President. The news organizations conclusion from this one data point? The tide was turning on the President and public opinion was shifting in favor of impeachment hearings. Was the poll's data accurate, or simply a result of the media blitz and attention focused on this singular issue (despite most Americans' apparent disgust over the amount of coverage given it, much like the American public tired over the daily O.J. Simpson trial updates a few years ago)? The question is a difficult one, but one which needs to be answered. If the data, as I suspect, are only indicating a self-made media trend, then the data are worthless in the sense of accurately portraying most Americans' attitudes toward the impeachment process. If the media are _making_ news by influencing public opinion in this manner, they need to be more aware of it and work to stop it. The American public expects the media to report news, not make it. But more interesting is the question of whether polls which ask about arcane political processes can ever reflect anything. Do most people even understand the impeachment process? Do they understand that every minute the Congress spends debating this issue, is a minute lost to governing the U.S.? I don't believe most Americans realize the consequences of the complicated process which is impeachment, and there is no way for the polls to accurately reflect this. If you ask a person, "Would you like to see well-known person Z 'dougafied'?" and the media kept focusing on 'dougafying' this person, you might very well say "Yes," without a clue as to what "dougafying" means or entails. If the poll were to ask, however, "Would you like to see Bill Clinton impeached, understanding that in doing so, the government will come to a virtual stand-still, all other government issues will fall by the wayside (including fixing Social Security, reforming healthcare and campaign spending, etc.), and the end result may be that six months from now, after millions or more of your tax dollars were spent pursuing this issue, nothing may come of it?" That is a much more fair question, giving a lot more information about the consequences of the word "impeachment" in this context. Yet a poll would never ask such an admittedly biased question. But polls could be designed to ask questions where the definitions of the words and their likely consequences were well-understood by those being polled. Without that understanding, we might as well ask people what they feel about "dougafying" others. Polling and its effects on public opinion need to be better understood, if not by the media who commission and report the poll results, then by laypeople who hear or read the results. Badly designed or conducted polls are just like any other bad research -- their results are meaningless and can usually be ignored. The more people question how polls are conducted, who was sampled, and what specific questions were asked (and in what context), the more likely polls will begin to show their true colors. They are media creations in this media-driven age, where instant feedback on any issue facing Americans is not only becoming an expectation, but a demand for what the public thinks or feels on any issue. The psychology and the dynamics behind polling and its effects on its subject need to be more closely researched. Until that time, polls should be taken with a healthy grain of salt. _________________________________________________________________