The Australian (which understands Newspoll because News Ltd owns it) editorialises this morning:
Too many polls allows [sic] political reporting as sport.
…
The rise of the Galaxy Poll and Fairfax newspapers’ attempt to become competitive against Newspoll with its AC Neilson [sic] survey have produced a continuous stream of numbers and percentages for all to analyse. This has allowed the media to indulge in the reporting of politics as if it were a sporting match. The trend has been exacerbated by a corresponding rise in the number of internet blogs offering comment on both the poll results and the reporting of them.
…
We at The Australian have been innundated [sic] with complaints from Howard-haters when we have not splashed [sic] with every poll result showing a commanding lead to Labor, even if nothing has changed.
…
The fact remains that many of the people who are eager to offer a simplistic reading of the polls do not really understand them.
If I’ve missed any grammatical or spelling errors, please do point them out.
Elsewhere: More commentary at another “internet blog”, The Poll Bludger. And via a commenter at Poll Bludger, some much more intelligent commentary from Dennis Atkins in the Courier-Mail:
There is a remarkable consistency to all of these polls – including the ACNielsen online survey showing an outcome that matched phone polls almost exactly – which cannot be ignored.
Newspoll founder Sol Lebovic told Gerard Henderson’s Sydney Institute on Monday night that he thought the Labor vote was soft.
“I don’t accept the view that this election is a repeat of 1996,” he said.
In fact, no one is saying the election is like 1996, just that the outcome could be in that ballpark if the polls remain stubborn.
And, as Possums Pollytics pointed out last week, Lebovic’s old firm measured the strength of the Labor vote last week and, when crunched, the numbers are much worse for the Coalition. If any vote is soft, it could be the Liberal and National vote. There’s a thought with which to conjure.
OMG!
What are they smoking.
In fairness to the editorial writers at the Australian, it is not easy to laud your own product (because you own it) while simultaneously disowning it (because it is telling you things you don’t want to know) and excoriate your competitors’ products (Nielsen, Morgan) and criticise, but not too much, your colleagues’ product (Galaxy), all of which are saying identical things.
Definition of “A bit rich” = The Oz complaining about people “reporting on politics as if it were a sporting match”. “The trend” they are most concerned about, I’d suggest, is the proliferation of alternative forums of opinion and analysis – i.e. competition. But this one seems to be written more in sorrow than in anger
In this light, and in the spirit of credit where its due, Atkins’ attitude to the wide range of online psephology and commentary is uber-refreshing. Just goes to show, I suppose, that it’s hard to pin down very large organisations like News as “pro” or “anti” blogging, citizen journalism etc.
So last time it was Dennis who had a cry, do you think this time it is Christopher Pearson after Possum’s devestating slap down?
May well be the subtext.
This is what happens when you leave a pot (aka an election without a date)on the stove with the lid jammed on and turn up the heat. Everything starts to go a bit crazy.
Its like one of those media stake outs – the journos start to interview each other because they have run out of angles anf talent.
The poor old Government Gazette just doesn’t know where to go at the minute.
I don’t think your first example is a grammatical error. The subject of the sentence is not the polls, but an elided understood part of the sentence, e.g., [The publication/taking/commissioning of] too many polls allows political reporting as sport.”
I think you’re being a bit kind there, Bismarck. It certainly reads badly.
The blogs are really getting to them, aren’t they?
Good.
Personally, I’d prefer there to be one or two other viable parties to vote for than just Labor, Liberal and The Greens, but the polls for Labor right through this year have been remarkable, and historic. The Australian stands rightly accused of not acknowledging the stunning fortnightly showings by Labor in Newspoll.
Remember the three month long ‘Labor Honeymoon’ headlines?
“The fact remains that many of the people who are eager to offer a simplistic reading of the polls do not really understand them.”
The Libs/Coalition are absolutely tanking in the polls, and have been tanking all year long, what’s not to understand?
Hilariously, Sol Lebovic now claims the poll he founded cannot be trusted!
Fantastic.
I think the subheading is infelicitous but there’s no actual mistake. They mean ‘too many polls’ in the aggregate. ‘Splashed’ as a verb is definitely not an error.
That said, the editorial is generally written very ill, I think there’s something amiss with the first sentence, and the blue pencil-wielder really should have done something about this – “Labor is certainly keen for the perception it will have a landslide win to take hold to help build a community acceptance for change.”
I also think whoever wrote this almost certainly got the idea from recent discussions on this here internet blog and on Club Troppo (Nicholas Gruen’s post especially).
Bismark is right, “too many polls” functions as a single unified subject. But it is poorly expressed. So badly that Mark is perhaps right to disown it with a sic!
Well it certainly is infelicitous!
No, but it’s awful writing. They mean something like “splashed as a headline” and abbreviating it that way to a term that is trade jargon for editors and journos just reinforces the narcissism of it all.
Bismarck, Laura, and David are all too kind. “Too many polls” is a plural noun phrase, not a collective. The equivalent collective noun phrase would be “Having too many polls”.
Those who are paid professionally to write become role models, and have a duty to demonstrate skilful usage of spelling, punctuation, grammar and style.
“Allows” is a crap say-nothing verb in this context. Does the writer just mean it in the sense that human existence also “allows” political reporting as sport? It’s also tautological to say “too many [has a negative consequence]“.
Laura, splashed is a verb but something in the sentence is wrong…
“Those who are paid professionally to write become role models, and have a duty to demonstrate skilful usage of spelling, punctuation, grammar and style.”
You’ll get no argument from me on that, andyc.
Whenever I read about journalistic splashing I think of Boot of the Beast.
I’m breathlessly awaiting tomorrow’s riposte to this thread:
We understand the subjunctive mode because we own it!
This is hilarious. The GGs analysis has been laughable all year. To deride other for “not understanding polls” is an risible conceit, given that your average GG analysis is akin to some old geezer in a rocker feeling somethin coming “in me waters”.
Its all folk wisdom based claptrap, issuing in speculative and generally incorrect predictions like Teh Bounce, and Teh Narrowing.
“But polling also shows that people think the country is heading in the right direction.” From the last little bit in the GG editorial.
Who could have concocted a question like this to ask, as a poll question, without thinking about the double meaning? Worse still, how could an editor of a supposedly serious broadsheet rely on this as a sign that all is not lost, for the Right, without falling about laughing?
I wonder what they will say if Howard gets smacked at the next election? Will they just conveniently forget about everything they said?
On the right direction/wrong track question, here’s arleeshar at Stoush:
http://stoush.net/arleeshar/645/polling-on-the-wrong-track?PHPSESSID=adc7ac52fc864c884993a340c526b353
And Saulwick and Muller in yesterday’s Crikey:
Shorter GG: Lay off of us!
Weren’t they just ripping up teachers on the front page for misspelling some words in some list. And weren’t those mistakes of the ‘embarrassing’/'embarassing’ kind exactly the same type as the ‘innundate’/inundate’ error?
Is there a law that requires this sort of cosmic balancing of the books?
Speaking of tautology…
I think it more likely that they were inundated by complaints that “nothing has changed” when The Oz was celebrating a Howard revival courtesy of the post-outlier (60-40 2PP) poll.
When has The Oz allowed even the vaguest hint of a favourable poll result for the Govt to be “overtaken”??
Delusional. They are so GG it hurts.
What strikes me repeatedly about the GG’s crazed editorials of recent months is the continual use of the royal “we”. As in, we at the GG think anyone from THE LEFT is stupid.
Which means they are talking to considerably less that half the population if the polls are to be believed. Ah sorry, the polls are not to be believed.
The one person/voice does not write all the GG editorials. There are different levels of spittle-flecked abuse and poor sentence construction from day to day.
It looks to me like the GG runs some sort of collective basket-weaving editorial workshop and depending on the level of technical expertise or hate-filled bile required…. I swear I can hear Paddy McGuiness’s voice in the most rabid anti-left tirades.
So who is “we” anyway? Anyone know?
West’s swingers rallying to Coalition
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22483534-601,00.html
This is an amazing piece of bullshit by News Corp.
“Oh the West is turning up good for Howard! Well, except everybody thinks the leader is a moron.”
Just when did it become de rigeur for political storytellers to convince their prey with positive news? Isn’t it better to play it up as an apocalypse for Howard and dutifully ask that we back the underdog?
If nothing has changed, why have they ’splashed’ at all and not turned their attentions elsewhere? Wanting better reporting doesn’t make you a Howard-hater, or even a Chris-Mitchell-hater.
Strangely enough so do I, by means of a circuitous process. ‘Splash’ becomes ‘plash’ which detours to Boot’s ‘Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole’ and then on to a mental holiday of uncertain destination until the phone rings.
I suspect that’ll be the “media narrative” of last resort!
At the moment, Howard is hanging off calling the election because he’s deluded himself into thinking that he’s an ace campaigner and that they need to get “within striking distance” in the polls before the campaign starts. I suspect the delay is just further entrenching the Labor lead. In the meantime, they’re going all out to try to engineer some poll movement. If there’s no “campaign bounce”, I imagine we will get some sort of begging, pleading “vote for the underdog JHo” thing from the GG and friends.
Yes, it reads badly, but I think that this may be an example of sloppiness – perhaps the writer left out something like “The existence of ” before the first word. A collection of words such as this is often implied in writing.
If Person A says “Person B is smart and insightful”, the compliment has at least some potential credibility.
But if Person B says “I’m smart and insightful”, they’re just a bombastic dickhead.
The Australian’s editorial team don’t seem to understand this. Hence every time they claim to be so smart and insightful, they just come across as bombastic dickheads.
What they need is some third-parties who are prepared to give them some unsolicited compliments…
*sound of pin dropping*
Too much of the punters money to spend to call it yet. And with the way previous spending has assisted the coalition, especially the neo-negative, I say take as long as you like..
I expect Dr Kevin Donnelly to excoriate The Australian in his next column on Orstralya’s
slippingplummeting edumacation standards.The GG certainly lends emphasis to the word risible, which can now be defined as upliftingly bad.
And a certain syntax borrowed from the Dubya, perhaps?
It’s the left which indulge in bad spelling and gramma, whereas we are always right, even when we’re wrong.
In the past I’ve admired the tightness and crispness of the lead editorials. When they are at their best, I don’t think you can find more economical writing in journalism. But I agree with the different writers thing. They have a specialist ranter to write the waffly teh left are teh suxxor we are brilliant our competitors are poo columns. That person is hopeless. I think he/she writes drunk.
Christ on a crunch. After this debacle, I don’t think a letter to the editor will do much good. I’m seriously thinking of contacting Big Rupert himself, and seeing how he reacts.
It’s not that I expect him to cut out the bias. But it took him a couple of decades to get the GG as influential as it is now. To have his legacy ruined by monkeys like Mitchell and Milne and Kelly – that’s gotta hurt.
Great news for Howard lovers!
There has been a 25% recovery in GG grammatical errors. Bring on the election!
It looks like the GG outsourced the composition of this editorial to a committee of Blairite Flying Monkeys.
Memo to GG Editorial board:
If you want monkeys to do your editorials, you must invest in an infinite number of keyboards.
GG-speak:
Is the GG implying, nevertheless, that it is possible to have a simplistic reading of the polls and yet still demonstrate an understanding of them?
If so, this admission utterly undermines the validity of their pathetic little whinge.
I’m a little torn on the “too many polls allows” but agree with Andyc and suggest “Excessive polling allows…”
as both snappy and unambiguous.
But as they say, you can’t put lippy on a turd.
Hey, elections, polling percentages, party politics, post after post, it’s all getting pretty insular. There’s a revolution going on in Burma, you know, which is something that should truly exercise the minds and energy of the left.
It is apparently customary in the US press to houseclean teh pundits if a party is rolled in an election, so the publications reflect the consensus.
Rupert must be thinking like that about The Australian, since it has so many of the little blighters, and they hang around in the entrance hall squeaking so noisily and annoying the customers.
I once saw a dumped pundit forlornly eating lunch alone in a rather nice restaurant. At the time I thought it was a bit sad, and said person had been churlishly treated.
Since then, they have backed a war and stained their hands with blood.
The clause “dump the bodies on the pavement” is so layered. Even better than “dig your own grave”.
Here, this might help clarify how Rupert runs his media.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/05/17/murdoch/
“The greening of Fox
Rupert Murdoch says his entire empire is going green — while telling its audience to do the same — because it’s “simply good business.”
Last week, the media mogul pledged not only to make his News Corp. empire carbon neutral, but to persuade the hundreds of millions of people who watch his TV channels and read his newspapers to join the cause.
I saw what he [Rupert's son] did at [British Sky Broadcasting] and we said, well, let’s make it companywide.”
Read the whole thing. Rupert admits, almost directly. that he has the power to decide what is covered and how, that he has and will use that power and that underlings will comply.
The Gazette refers to Howard Haters. However, the major complaint is the amount of unjustified Howard Boosterism that permeates their reportage.
No doubt the editors want to avoid telling the primarily business focussed advertiser/readership that their team took another bollocking in the polls today.
It’s like the running gag in the old Yes Prime Minister series where whenever there was a radio newscast it would inevitably end with the “pound took a beating on the market today”.
In many ways it suits Labor to have them feeding their readership this drivel dressed up as analysis and knowledgeable commentary. If the public is sleep walking to a change of Government as Aboott has asserted previously, part of the reason is that The Australian is sugar coating the truth.
What? No comment from timmy blair?
No Zoot, Tim is busy trying to find out where he stands in the pecking order of the fever swamp of the radical right wing wingnuts.
Andy Blot wont change but.
Well they just can’t help themselves can they?
I don’t know about the eastern states editions, but in the Perth GG this morning (p6 ‘The Nation’) we were greeted with the breathless headline:
Followed by lead par:
Honestly, I couldn’t be rooted linking to it, but the story and the poll were all about local state politics: State Lab vs state Lib in an isolated mid-term survey. Premier Carpenter vs Opposition leader Omedei.
In fact no questions about Howard or federal elections whatsoever.
But could anybody seriously think that this was anything other than:
a) A serious attempt to mislead, or
b) Really sloppy sub-editing?
Just pathetic.
And here’s the link: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22483534-5006789,00.html
Substantially modified from what was actually published in black & white this morning, I should add.
Indeed CK, and wasnt the Gazeditorial bunker just whining about the proliferation of mickey mouse polls? http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22487254-11949,00.html
Another demented low in ‘late Reichstag’ journalism.
MH @ 5.42pm
Burma is bleeding: brave monks and brave citizens marching. So few human rights. Elected PM either in prison or under house arrest. Hundreds of political prisoners. Despotic regime. Military rulers since 1962 (?)…. but why should the Auusie “left” care about things like that when an editorial writer can’t write proper?
Kevin Rudd and Foreign Minister Downer both recently expressed distaste for the Burmese regime, but the strongest statement calling for freedom in Burma came from President George W. Bush at the UN General Assembly.
Is that why LP isn’t interested? I hope not!
What does “not interested” mean in this context? We’re not trying to be a “blog of record”. We do this voluntarily in our spare time, and we don’t ever attempt to be comprehensive in our coverage of issues.
At the moment it’s not surprising at this stage of proceedings that we’re focussed heavily on the election. I, for one, also don’t feel I know anywhere near enough about the Burmese situation to offer any commentary that would add anything to the sentiments I’m sure everyone shares. I’d be more than happy to consider a guest post from anyone expert in Burma, and there’s always the open Saturday Salon thread where people can discuss anything that’s on their minds.
In fact I’m rather annoyed by the tone of this. The old saw from the right was “look, they’re not talking about x therefore they must condone the evils of Islam” or whatever.
If you don’t like what we write, there’s nothing stopping you starting your own blog, but I’d appreciate it if you laid off the moralising based on your perceptions of our priorities.
properly
MH wrote:
It is indeed exercising the minds and energy of the political party of which I am currently a member, i.e. the Greens. As well as Kerry Nettle and Bob Brown (see also here), Green Leichhardt City Councillor Jamie Parker has a long record of involvement in campaigns in solidarity with the democratic movement in Burma.
Might I respectfully suggest that before well-meaning Eustonistas and other would-be internal critics of the Left roll out those well-worn 1980s formulation “TEH LEFT has failed to address…” and “TEH LEFT is wrong about…”, they take the time to ascertain whether the Left actually is failing to address and/or actually is wrong about whatever it is we are supposed to be failing to address and/or wrong about.
I make the preceding comment as a person who moved in precisely those Left circles in the 1980s (the Sydney CPA, Australian Left Review, Tribune) which were most concerned to address and to try to be right about things which the traditional Left had failed to address and/or been wrong about. In hindsight I would have to concede that at times, through a combination of excessive political modesty, justifiable but perhaps over-egged historical shame, and insufficient intellectual modesty, we may have strayed into a kind of thinking which could be summed up by the apocryphal article title “Why the Left is always already wrong about everything”.
You’re mixing your historical metaphors
Mark:
oh dear, I used a “moralising tone”? well that puts me in the company of at least 50% of the posters here I reckon!
I agree everyone has their own priorities, and so they should. I appreciate the efforts you all put into this blog; it’s the only one I visit, because of the very high standard of knowledge, commentary & wit.
I was echoing MH @ 5.42pm who said, inter alia, “it’s all getting pretty insular”.
Today tigtog has posted on Burma/Myanmar, which I welcome.
I reserve the right to criticise “the left”, “the right”, the “uncommitted”, the unclassifiable, and the erudite. Gee, I dunno, seems like some folk “can dish it out but they can’t take it”…
If I transgress your comments policy, please let me know. In the meantime, free speech is my priority and that’s why I detest the Burmese junta and its decades of repression.
Anyone done any election polling in Mandalay recently?
Will the all of the hung Senate be meeting in Aung San Suu Kyi’s backyard? Or will they be hung in the avenue near the Shwedagon pagoda?
How are the preference deals working out?
cheerio
Right on, Paul. It always annoys me when right wingers complain that the left are silent about Burma, Zimbabwe, Iran, etc.
Actually the ONLY grassroots activism around supporting democracy in these 3 countries is on the left.
Not true, juz
Amnesty International and other human rights organisations work on behalf of political prisoners in Burma/Myanmar, and Amnesty is NOT “of the left”. It is scrupulously independent in its statements.
Some Amnesty members may support ‘left’ parties in their own country, e.g. in Australia; but they may also support Collingwood Foootball Club (to their dire shame) and it would be inaccuarate to say “the only grassroots work in Australia for freedom in Burma is done by Collingwood supporters”.
Federal Govt and Federal Opposition have both repeatedly called for political freedoms in Zimbabwe and in Burma/Myanmar. Oh sorry, that doesn’t count. It’s not ‘grassroots’. Might be effective here & there but it’s not grassroots. Ignore it then. Sorry. Stupid of me: I was trying to focus on actions & words that might assist the poor bastards in Zimbabwe & Burma… FOOL !! IDJUT !!! I should have been focussing on internecine disputation within Australia.
Sorry!
Katz @ 9.42pm
Sorry, I deliberately said “can’t write proper” : the private ‘joke’ didn’t transmit as a joke, sorry.
I didn’t mean to type Auusie (Aussie).
Deliberate:
‘iggerance’ for ignorance
“can’t write proper” instead of … properly
‘we did English Spreshun this mornin’ in school”
Yokel humour. I’m from rural Australia. We larf at diff’r'nt stuff as youse city folk, yair.
Fair call on Amnesty (although I’d be surprised if any of their staff vote Liberal).
But since the initial post was about blog sites and the individuals here not doing anything about Burma, my ‘grassrooots’ qualifier was entirely reasonable.
Can I just point out that I suggested to Ambigulous that this could be discussed on the open post – Saturday Salon? If you can’t find it on the sidebar, just scroll down the front page. This post doesn’t pertain to Burma (obviously!) and it does become messy if anyone comes in late and wants to talk about its topic. It’s really a matter of courtesy not just to me but to other commenters on this blog.
Too late, Mark, Ambigulous and MH have successfully derailed this thread. Some of the sharp comments above about the GGs editorial conduct were getting too close to the bone I guess.
Before the derailment, CKs post about the GGs editorial on the west australian polling results was a corker. Sounds to me like a classic case of “misleading and deceptive”. And the suggestion that Howard is winning in WA is now flowing through elsewhere (eg Canberra Times this morning)…
grace, I’m tempted to delete all the off topic comments, but I’ll leave them there on the understanding that the commenters in question understand that next time they should take such extraneous matters to the open thread.
Understood, Mark. Sorry.
Grace: I have no idea what you mean, as I neither work for the GG nor admire its endless waffle about the political polls. I think you must be speculating: guesswork is fun, but it’s no substitute for the alternatives! Admired your work on the AEC enrolment matter. The more who vote the better, IMHO.
cheerio