It always comes down to asking the right questions
Ready or not, it’s full-blown election season crunch time, and the political rhetoric is going to get nastier and the media more misleading. Why? Because that’s the nature of things in our republic these days, especially since the last two presidential elections. Actually, one could easily trace this back to 1994, if not earlier, during the Clinton administration when politics got uglier and reporting got more biased.
Among the tense and very consequential election battlegrounds out there, we have to watch Missouri.
A new poll sponsored by St. Louis Post-Dispatch and KMOV-TV claims 58 percent of Missouri voters back a November ballot initiative that would promote both human cloning and embryonic stem cell research there. The poll, conducted by the Maryland-based Research 2000 firm, found 37 percent opposed it and five percent were undecided.
Pay close attention to this part:
Research 2000 has come under fire before for biased bioethics questions in the case of Terri Schiavo. The firm polled 800 likely voters Aug. 28-31 and the poll had a 3.5 percent margin of error. Missouri residents who oppose the Amendment 2 proposal have outnumbered those attending pro-human cloning rallies.
If the math is there with opponents outnumbering supporters, why doesn’t the poll reflect that?
Why don’t these polls (hardly) EVER reflect the reality on sensitive and high-stakes life issues? One, because media reporting reflects media’s own biases in the language they use and the angles they take. Two, because the polls they use are based on questions designed and engineered to elicit certain responses most often. Three, because public opinion polls allegedly report what the public thinks, so that IN ITSELF forms public opinion. And four, because the reality that is hidden behind the reporting is the power brokers, the influence peddlers, the financiers who back the abortion, contraception, euthanasia and stem cell industry(ies). In other words, follow the money.
Opponents of the initiative have complained that backers don’t represent grassroots Missouri residents as the group heading up the initiative has received more than $16 million from a stem cell research firm, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, that stands to gain from the referendum passing.
Here’s a clear, detailed and well-researched explanation of the Missouri initiative (in pdf version). If it’s not in your state yet, it’s coming soon. Especially if these efforts win any victories in this election.
