News organizations promised Wednesday to look into why their Election Day exit polls showed an initial surge for John Kerry (news - web sites), but also blamed bloggers for spreading news that gave a misleading view of the presidential race.I have a problem with a number of points made in this piece.
The exit poll data was delivered at several points Tuesday to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and The Associated Press by the National Election Pool, a company formed in the wake of the networks' blown calls on election night 2000.
The first wave showed Kerry with a lead of three percentage points in Florida and four points in Ohio — both battleground states won by President Bush (news - web sites) when the votes were actually counted, giving the president his margin of victory.
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The Florida and Ohio exit poll results, along with those in other states were Kerry was strong, was quickly disseminated on Web sites such as Slate, the Drudge Report, Wonkette.com, Atrios.blogspot.com and Command Post.
Some of these sites cautioned readers not to make too much of the information. The Command Post delivered the news under the headline "Grain of Salt." Drudge removed the numbers almost as quickly as they were posted. And Slate warned: "these early exit poll numbers do not divine the name of the winner."
"I didn't have any real compunction about putting it up there," said Alan Nelson, co-manager of The Command Post. "I didn't struggle with the decision, because I knew it was going to become a global news item within about 30 seconds.
"Our approach is: We post, you decide," Nelson said.
First of all, if the poll data was wrong, and it was, that has nothing to do with the bloggers. Responsibility for that lies with the polling company, the pollsters, and the poll. Turns out that the early exits weere heavily weighted female and I believe they weren't representative geographic samples. Bloggers don't make this stuff up.
Second, two of the five "bloggers" listed aren't bloggers. Slate and Matt Drudge aren't bloggers. Slate is a web publication and the Drudge Report is a web site. Neither are blogs. Nobody takes Wonkette seriously and if they do they shouldn't be voting anyway. Command Post did the right thing by posting the numbers with a warning about their reliability. Atrios is, well, Atrios...err...Duncan Black...whatever.
Don't let the Old Media get away with blaming the New Media for doing the right thing.
