CNN spins story about pubilc’s wavering support for Sotomayor
July 10th, 2009 by Rightwing Czar at 9:46 amRSS feeds are an interesting thing. I have all my political news feeds dumped into one folder I periodiaclly browse through, and this morning I bumped into two different headlines from two different CNN stories.
The first headline read “Poll: Sotomayor confirmation favored.” This particular feed chooses to show the first line of the story only (for those not familiar with how RSS feeds work, whoever runs the feed can choose to show all of the post in the feed reader, or just an except – usually the first line or two – which means you have to open the site to read the read. The first line of this story is the follow:
Days before the start of Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings, a new national poll indicates that by a narrow margin, Americans would like the Senate to confirm her as the next Supreme Court justice.
Nothing unusual to me so I skipped over it. I figured that Sotomayor’s confirmation would be favored, especially a poll CNN decided to run.
But then I’m caught by surprise by the next CNN story I run into. It’s in a different part of CNN’s website, has the headline “Poll: Do Americans want Sotomayor confirmed?” This headline seemed mildly more interesting than the last, but it was the first line of the story that caught me by surprise:
In a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, 47 percent of those questioned said they’d like to see Judge Sotomayor confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Say what? Didn’t CNN just tell me that Sotomayor’s confirmatino was favored? 47% doesn’t seem favored to me. So I go back to that first story and click it, to pull it up on CNN’s website.
Suddenly the headline goes from “Poll: Sotomayor confirmation favored” to “Poll: Nearly half support Sotomayor’s confirmation.” Nearly half? So the actual headline of the story wasn’t, as you suggested, that Americans support her confirmation? It’s only nearly half? Well at least you kinda-sorta-tried to be honest.
This is just a minor example of the media malpractice that continues to persist, but it is absolutely ridiculous. Less than half of the country currently support Sotomayor’s nomination to the most important judicial office in the nation and CNN runs with a headline saying that Americans favor her confirmation.
Can you imagnie if this was a Bush appointee? The headline would read “Poll: Less than half support Sotomayor confirmation” with a lead-in like “Less than a week before her hearing, less than half of the country support Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.”
Instead, CNN tries to pull the wool over our eyes and declare that we actually favor Sotomayor’s confirmation, despite the number in support being less than a majority.
The intent is clear. People are shaped by what they hear, if they hear it often enough. If you continually hear that most Americans favor Sotomayor’s confirmation, eventually it will sink in and many of the undecideds will hop on the bandwagon and get annoyed at those dirty Republicans who always seem to be on the opposite side of the issue from “most Americans.”
The problem with media bias these days isn’t MSNBC with its cast of Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann. Everyone watching those programs knows they are parrots for the DNC and watches them because of that.
No, the problem is groups like CNN, publishing stories like this that are seemingly objective and only slightly spin the story to make it positive or negative. Here’s an idea: why not just report the facts? 47% of people in this poll favor Sotomayor’s confirmation, 40% don’t, and 13% are undecided. Why not just report the facts and let people reading decide whether or not 47% should be taken as a positive or negative? Whether or not 47% means that Americans favor her confirmation.
Is that really too much to ask?