My Turn ( A Christian View Point on Everyday Issues and News)

I wish for once we can just read the news and see the real truth of the matter without having to read between the lines. In a recent article in the New York Times on the current campaign between George Bush and John Kerry, the headlines reads "Nation's Direction Prompts Voters' Concern, Poll Finds". After I read this article, I thought the appropriate headline should be "Polls show Bush Leading Kerry by 8 points". But you had to read almost to the end of the article to get the real gist of the story.


Instead of just admiting that this poll shows President Bush ahead in the polls, the writer tries to explain the result of the poll instead of just giving us the real numbers. This is how the article puts it

"The candidacy of Ralph Nader looms as a potentially lethal threat to Democratic hopes of regaining the White House: With Mr. Nader in the race, Mr. Bush leads Mr. Kerry by 46 percent to 38 percent, with Mr. Nader drawing 7 percent of the votes. In a sign of the polarized electorate Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry are facing, three-quarters of supporters of each candidate asserted they would not change their mind before the election.

The nationwide telephone poll of 1,206 adults, including 984 registered voters, was taken from last Wednesday through Sunday. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points."

I bet you if Kerry had been leading in this poll, not only would the headline have been different, the results of the polls would have been in the first paragraph of the article not towards the end, while the article itself would have made the front page of the times, not buried inside like it is now.

posted by elizabeth @ 2:49 PM