CNN's Handheld Audience Reaction Meters: Entertainment, Not Polling

It's Entertainment; not Polling:
Former Gallop Pollster Lampoons CNN's "Audience Reaction Meters" used in Presidential Debates




Special to Stinky Journalism
by David W. Moore

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Still wonder what-the-heck those squiggly lines are at the bottom of your CNN screen during the Presidential debates?

David W. Moore, the author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes The Truth Behind The Polls, and former senior editor at the Gallop Poll for thirteen years will tell you the folly of this pseudo-science.

Mr. Moore lampoons CNNs use of live Audience Reaction Meters during the Presidential debates as junk science. He tells you where the 25 year old hand meter technology came from and how its use in the debates, is completely counter to the concept of focus groups. He writes, [focus groups] are designed to obtain in-depth responses from the participants, who actually discuss the issues with each other and arrive at more considered views than what polls normally measure.

Moore argues that CNN has presented a 32 member groups reactions to candidates comments (shown in squiggly lines [0-100 with 0 equaling bad and 100, good]) as representative of American without one scintilla of scientific basis.

Should Americans really care what 32 people from Ohio think?

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by David W. Moore
image: Stinky Journalism
Source: Latest Journalism News Updates