The Opinion Makers

On January 8, 2008, the date of the New Hampshire primary, media pollsters made their biggest prediction gaffe since dubbing Thomas Dewey a shoo-in to beat incumbent president Harry S. Truman. Eleven different polls forecast a solid win by Barack Obama; instead, Hillary Clinton took New Hampshire and recharged her candidacy. The months that followed only brought more dismal performances and contradictory results--undeniable evidence that something is terribly wrong with the polling industry today. It's easy to spot the election polls that get it wrong. Equally misleading and often far more disastrous are polls misrepresenting public opinion on government policy. For instance, in the period leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, every major media poll showed substantial public support for a preemptive strike. In truth, there was no majority of Americans calling for war. For the first time, David W. Moore--praised as a "scholarly crusader" by the New York Times--reveals that pollsters don't report public opinion, they manufacture it. And they do so at the peril of our democratic process. While critics cry foul over partisan favoritism in the mainstream media, what's really at work is a power bias that polls legitimate by providing the stamp of public approval. Drawing on over a decade's experience at the Gallup Poll and a distinguished academic career in survey research, Moore describes the questionable tactics pollsters use to create poll-driven news stories--including force-feeding respondents, slanting question wording, and ignoring public ignorance on even the most arcane issues. More than proof that the numbers do lie,The Opinion Makersclearly and convincingly spells out how urgent it is that we make polls deliver on their promise to monitor, not manipulate, the pulse of democracy.

Opinion making is leadership by an active thinking writer who produces content for lower-end book readers among which this author - whose theories encompass several models that try to explain the diffusion of innovations, ideas, or ideological products - is an example.

"This is a book about modern political journalism. More precisely, it is about the interplay of politics and the press (meaning all the mass media) in Washington today. It is about government officials using reporters--and reporters using government officials."--Book cover.

A sobering look at the intimate relationship between political power and the news media, When the Press Fails argues the dependence of reporters on official sources disastrously thwarts coverage of dissenting voices from outside the Beltway. The result is both an indictment of official spin and an urgent call to action that questions why the mainstream press failed to challenge the Bush administration’s arguments for an invasion of Iraq or to illuminate administration policies underlying the Abu Ghraib controversy. Drawing on revealing interviews with Washington insiders and analysis of content from major news outlets, the authors illustrate the media’s unilateral surrender to White House spin whenever oppositional voices elsewhere in government fall silent. Contrasting these grave failures with the refreshingly critical reporting on Hurricane Katrina—a rare event that caught officials off guard, enabling journalists to enter a no-spin zone—When the Press Fails concludes by proposing new practices to reduce reporters’ dependence on power. “The hand-in-glove relationship of the U.S. media with the White House is mercilessly exposed in this determined and disheartening study that repeatedly reveals how the press has toed the official line at those moments when its independence was most needed.”—George Pendle, Financial Times “Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston are indisputably right about the news media’s dereliction in covering the administration’s campaign to take the nation to war against Iraq.”—Don Wycliff, Chicago Tribune “[This] analysis of the weaknesses of Washington journalism deserves close attention.”—Russell Baker, New York Review of Books