"We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections." --John Adams
At the time of our nation's founding, journalists, like judges, were expected to comport with the highest standards of objectivity in order to protect the public virtue. Neither has held to that standard.
The press was charged with a heavy burden -- that of providing impartial reports about the issues of the day and those running for political office. Unbiased reporting was essential so that the people could discern for themselves what was best for our country.
First Amendment champion Thomas Jefferson penned, "Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe."
Likewise, James Madison wrote, "The right of freely examining public characters and measures ... has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right."
But no sooner had the press outlets discovered they wielded enormous power over public opinion, did they begin to use their pages to that end. And, neither Madison nor Jefferson could have imagined the power of television, or that of the tabloid media's dumbed-down message for the masses.
At the conclusion of his presidency, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare."
Two centuries later, "the press" is composed largely of Leftmedia propagandists, those who have mastered the art of partiality cloaked as objective journalism in pursuit of their own political .
Explicit examples of this partiality abound on the pages of major Leftmedia outlets such as The Washington Post and The New York Times.
However, the most deceptive Leftmedia method to influence national elections, especially presidential elections, is the implementation and reporting of political polling.
Polls, ostensibly, represent the views of a particular group of voters within an acceptable margin of error, but they are also used for a much more subtle and sinister purpose.
At best, reputable pollsters can get it wrong -- even though they poll representative statistical samples and ask objective questions.
However, most media-designed and reported polling is as "objective" as the mainstream media (MSM) outlets that sponsor them.
To that end, it is worth familiarizing oneself with the practice of Pollaganda, a propagandistic disinformation technique where political polling masquerades as "objective journalism" and instead advances a liberal bias.
Americans who participate in public-opinion polls about political performance are not political analysts, national-security specialists, economists or policy experts. They are folks who hold common labor and professional jobs in order to support their families and make ends meet. They are thus the backbone of our nation. Unfortunately, a large measure of their perspective on politics, national security, the economy and public policy is shaped by the MSM.
Pollaganda uses outcome-based opinion samples (polling instruments designed to generate a preferential outcome) reflecting prior-opinion indoctrination or cultivation by the media. The results are then used to manipulate public opinion further by advancing the perception that a particular opinion on an issue enjoys majority support. The MSM then presents this "data" as if it were "news."
I say "outcome based" because most polls reflect intentional propagation of a particular bias by Leftmedia television and print outlets to manipulate public opinion. They accomplish this by first indoctrinating viewers with "reporting" that reflects a particular bias, then conducting "opinion polls" which, of course, reflect that indoctrination.
Then the media uses poll results to proselytize further by treating the results as "news," which, in turn, induces "bandwagon" psychology -- the human tendency of those who do not have a strong ideological foundation to aspire to the side perceived to be in the majority -- and thus further drives public opinion toward the original media bias, ad infinitum.
Pollaganda, then, is self-perpetuating.
More of Mark Alexander's essay
