Monday, 27 December 2004

Rule 1: You don't talk about Poll Club

A Kansas sports page editor is inviting a visit from the media neutrality goons:

The Associated Press is the largest news-gathering agency in the world. In this country, it hasn’t had any real competition since United Press International went belly-up about a quarter-center ago. The AP’s mantra, like all media, is to report the news.

At the same time, however, the AP manufactures news. That’s what a poll is. Manufactured news. Polls are released Mondays or Tuesdays because those are the traditionally slow news days, and the polls fills air space on radio and TV and columns in newspapers.

Basically an AP poll is a bunch of media-types—in this case sports writers and sportscasters—who band together to produce news that isn’t really news in order to sell more newspapers and lure more listeners and viewers. There’s nothing wrong with that in a business sense, but more and more, newspapers, in particular, are beginning to sense they’re sending the wrong message.

The media engaging in agenda setting and making up news? Never!