At gatewatching, Jason Wilson discusses the revived blogospherical debate about the absurd narratives based on misinterpretations of polling from those punditocrats whom Possum has been pleased to dub the Opionatas. Wilson writes:
If you’d rather rely on qualitative polling than the hunches of Dennis to get an insight into what people thought about the budget a little while back, check out Graham Young’s write-up of his What the People Want polling series in On Line Opinion this morning.
This raises another interesting question. Why don’t the papers commission qualitative polling? All the political parties do it (and On Line Opinion’s open source polling is an attempt to democratise access to and analysis of qualitative data). The usual reason I’ve heard is expense. However, while it’s wrong to say that there isn’t a necessary knowledge base and skill set needed to interpret as well as collect qualitative data, using it effectively would, well, effectively cut out the middle Shanahan.
I’m sure newspaper readers would be a lot more interested in a read on what Australians are actually thinking about politics, rather than some inside the beltway nonsense from “insiders”. The media could pay for the polling by making the redundant opiniators redundant. But they’re not going to, are they? Because what we’d have then would be truly public journalism not journalists as power players.
Ps: Does anyone know how to make a complaint to the ABC? Do you have to be a Liberal Senator or can anyone do it? I’m thoroughly sick of items on the 7pm news being introduced with gems like “Rudd’s honeymoon is over”.
As requested, here’s the ABC’s complaints page – http://www.abc.net.au/contact/complaints.htm
You’re better off asking that question at Catallaxy, although the amount of bitching done about the ABC is probably inversely proportional to the amount of considered complaints they make.
I’m not sure the Australian is all that interested in qualitative polling – after all, they’re after fodder to keep the spin engine rotating, not actual facts.
Your question prompted me to have a quick look around theri website and voila!
http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/service.htm#complaints
Not sure if to will do you any good, however.
I’ve made a few complaints to the ABC re their online news coverage and the fact that half the time it looks like it was written by Janet Albrechtsen or Liberal party staffers.
This morning’s headlines about Rudd being ‘Keatingesque’ complete with big picture of Keating headlined arrogant was appalling.
They do have a feedback form though no one has ever responded when I’ve sent feedback or complaints to them.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/contact/feedback.htm
They do have a more formal complaints policy than that and you can follow it through to the bitter end if you want to rigorous about it. I posted it earlier with a link, but maybe it’s gone into the spaminator.
From my experience you receive a generic response, which although superficially tailored to your specific request, says absolutely nothing, but takes about 500 words to say it. This achieves the dual purpose of appearing to be reponsive to listener feedback, while effectively telling the listener to fuck off.
Modern management techniques have a lot to answer for.
BTW, why doesn’t Rudd make some strategic changes to the ABC board? The Opposition Organ may get a little hot under the collar, but so what? The ABC just gets worse and worse!
I’ve noticed the ABC’s new disposition to almost revel in negative headlines about the Rudd government.
It’s almost as if Juanita Phillips is saying “See…we’re not a nest of lefties after all”.
This went all the way through the world’s second longest election campaign last year, too, with the bug-eyed Michael Brissenden appearing nightly on the 7.30 Report to provide the boilerplate analysis: “What happens next is anyone’s guess. But for now, one thing is certain – the Rudd honeymoon is over.”
This line is now repeated as a mantra at the top of the ABC news bulletin every night, as a sort of product guarantee (trying so hard not to be seen leaning left, that it falls over to the right).
Someone needs to tell them that the election was decided seven months ago. And the other guys lost.
I might try to see if I can get their attention in some other way than putting in a pointless complaint!
Here’s the link again.
http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/service.htm
I agree you’ll probably get fobbed off, but I guess you can try!
“I might try to see if I can get their attention in some other way than putting in a pointless complaint!”
You might need the bricks for building at some time in the future. So don’t waste them. And adrian, there is a bit of a rumour around of merger plans for ABC and SBS. Both boards would then need to be dismantled as a result. Hooray.
Thanks, Fine.
That rumours going around for a long time. But what’s heating it up now is that Conroy isn’t very happy about SBS.
What’s he not happy about, Fine?
When he was in opposition he gave them a dreadful grilling about advertising revenue in Senate estimates. Apparently, he also has some concern about editorial policy and where the money is being spent – that’s the rumour anyway. The dilemma for SBS is trying to attract advertising revenue whilst still convincing government they should be getting government subsidy as well. It’s a bit of a tightrope.
Thanks, Fine.
Firstly, qualitative polling is shrouded in mystery. It’s enormously powerful and very few people have seen it – those who do feel very privileged indeed, and behave accordingly. For a while (in a period that seems long ago but wasn’t), the second-most powerful man in the party that governed the nation was not Peter Costello but Mark Textor. You don’t see qualitative polling in the newspaper for the same reason that you can’t get details of the Westpac-St George merger by popping in to your local branch. Letting sunlight in on mystery, and all that.
Secondly, it’s vacuous and ultimately unsatisfying to read about what might happen, rather than what has happened or does happen. It can be comforting to live in a world where your own urges and prejudices are refracted back at you, but it doesn’t prepare you for events which affect you but which you and your equally narrow-minded “leaders” can’t foresee in the hall of mirrors.
Insofar as this is important, it’s how “our leaders” react that is where the news really is. How the delivery of government services is affected by the “Rudd honeymoon” is unclear to me – perhaps I need to start reading different media.
“This went all the way through the world’s second longest election campaign last year, too, with the bug-eyed Michael Brissenden appearing nightly on the 7.30 Report to provide the boilerplate analysis: “What happens next is anyone’s guess. But for now, one thing is certain – the Rudd honeymoon is over.”
This line is now repeated as a mantra at the top of the ABC news bulletin every night, as a sort of product guarantee (trying so hard not to be seen leaning left, that it falls over to the right).”
……….Mr Denmore @7,
Jon Faine, on local ABC Melbourne, had a chat with Barry Cassidy this morning. “The Rudd honeymoon is over”, apparently. Yep, those famous words again.
The negativity towards Labor and Rudd was most obvious while caller criticism of the former Howard government members, actively discouraged. The brainwashing of all but a few Aunty hosts is quite breathtaking. It obviously extends well beyond the so called, “7PM news”, Mark.
Ken Lovell’s had an unsatisfactory response to a complaint he made to the ABC:
http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/2008/06/06/abc-complaint/
Funny that, Mark@18.
Jon Faine interviewed Rudd this morning. One of his questions was inevitably..now that Obama has the job, do you now regret supporting Hillary? Or something close to that. A good thing Ken has left the country and missed it.
Oh dear!