Posted by Jade
April 13th, 2010 
10 Comments
The Unbearable Wrongness of Survey Reporting
Frankly speaking, there’s something blatantly wrong about the way media outfits have been reporting political surveys. In fact, I would like to suggest that more than wrong, it’s criminal.
Journalism is supposed to be an account of facts that actually existed and occurred in the spacetime continuum of our trusty universe. Before getting distributed to the information-starved mass audience, however, the facts to be reported must have been verified either by eyewitness accounts or official documents. But even these “evidences” should not be taken at face value.
Instead, our dashing journalists must open their Pulitzeresque senses to the reality of fraud and deceit, which are among their mortal enemies. If journalists develop a gullible belief behavior to whatever press release is fed them by just about any Poncio Pilato, our beloved evening news and dailies would be yellow-sick with sensationalized false truths. We don’t want that to happen, do we? (Teka, hindi pa ba ganyan ang sitwasyon?)
Well, I have a not-so-surprising announcement to surprise you with: Our news media today couch survey reports in terms that blindly give credence to survey bodies. They treat these surveys’ claims as though they’re gospel truth, immaculately conceived and prophetically accurate.
Some examples:
“The survey, held from March 28-30, gave Villar a 29-percentage point or just an eight-point difference from Aquino’s 37 percent.” (From the Inquirer, 04/11/2010)
“In the latest survey, 2,100 respondents were asked: ‘Kung ang eleksyon ay gaganapin 0ngayon, sino ang pinakamalamang ninyong iboboto bilang mga Senador ng Pilipinas? Narito po ang listahan ng mga pangalan ng mga kandidato. Maaari po kayong pumili ng hanggang 12 pangalan’… The respondents were asked to choose from 62 names. The survey used face-to-face interviews of 2,100 adults with a margin of error of plus/minus 2.2%.” (From abs-cbnnews.com, 02/02/2010)
“A report aired over GMA News’ ‘24 Oras’ said of the 2,400 respondents, 28 percent chose Villar while 26 percent picked Aquino. The survey was conducted from March 3 to 10.” (From gmanews.tv, 03/22/2010)
“This was the latest findings in the pre-poll city-wide survey conducted at random by The Center for Issues and Advocacy from March 26-31, and from April 4-5, using a face-to-face survey multi-stage probability sampling method and a skip-interval method of 4 to 5 houses to obviate any possible bias. The Center reported that… the results clearly reflected the issues pervading among the city’s registered voters.” (From Mindanao Examiner, 04/12/2010)
Press releases from SWS, Pulse Asia, The Center and Ibon are information they claim to be data which they claim were gathered on a date they claim they were, in a manner they claim they were, with margins of error they claim they do have. They are all claims which truthfulness journalists don’t have any way of verifying unless they personally go to the places where survey bodies claim these surveys were conducted at the time they are claimed to have been conducted.
(Pero siyempre, hindi nila gagawin ‘to dahil mahal ang gasolina at kulang sila sa tao para gawin ‘yon. For most media outfits, their ability to pursue the truth could only be energized by money advertisers pay them.)
Journalists shouldn’t present survey press releases without constructing their attribution with the use of the word “claim” unless they themselves have taken the trouble to become eyewitnesses of these claims. Thus, the excerpt from the Inquirer above should have read: “The survey, which claimed that it was held from March 28-30, gave Villar a 29-percentage point or just an eight-point difference from Aquino’s 37 percent.” Otherwise, they manufacture their overblown news about what a diminutive 2,100 Filipinos think on the shaky basis of the perceived credibility of charts and graphs typewritten on bond papers purporting to be true and microcosmic of the 50 million registered voters. This is not a good fact finding habit.
And sadly, habits are hard to break.
