What I Didn't Learn From the Chicago Tribune Today

[billroper]

Less dramatic than the New Jersey presidential poll I linked to yesterday, here's the Survey USA poll for Illinois, which shows Kerry up in Illinois by 4 percent. I wouldn't have heard about this if I were just reading the Chicago Tribune, because they completely failed to mention it, although they did cite a poll showing that Kerry had increased his lead in Michigan. (I heard about it on WBBM-AM on my drive home, where they noted that Illinois had been so out of play that you couldn't get a free Kerry/Edwards lawn sign around here. You were told to go to the website and buy them.) The Tribune also buried this Washington Post page one story about the CBS/Rather/National Guard documents deep in the front section of the paper.

The Tribune did have this article about Kerry's slippage among women voters on the front page above the fold. But I suppose that editorial judgment is a slippery thing...

In the meantime, if another poll comes out that looks anything like the Survey USA poll for Illinois cited above, I may have to find the mute button on my TV when the campaign commercials show up. So far, it's all been deathly silent, since the state has been believed to be safe for Kerry. (And probably still is, but I guess you never know.)

Comments

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

I'm taking it that there's a complaint here, but I'm not really clear on what it is. Are you really complaining that the Trib didn't highlight a story that is mostly pro-Rather and anti-Bush? Maybe they didn't put it on page one because it goes against their right-wing, big-business interests. <g>

As to not mentioning every survey, gads, I wish the press would mention fewer of them, not more. Most of the coverage seems to be about the 'horse race' as it's called, and not the issues. I guess I could see reporting the local results, but any reason to stress Survey USA (who I'd never heard of before you started linking to them)? Does the Trib seem to use this company when it suits them?

[billroper]

*shrug* Different readings of the story, I suppose. I didn't think that it was particularly pro-Rather, but I have my own set of biases.

Survey USA is working for WBBM-TV (in Chicago) and KSDK-TV (in St.Louis), so it's possible that the Trib didn't want to cite a competitor's poll. However, it's so different from earlier polls that it would seem to be news, if the definition of news is "something different is going on". (And I didn't know anything about Survey USA until I started picking up on them from the Electoral Vote Predictor website.)

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

Maybe not pro-Rather. Maybe just bending over backwards to look fair.

"Any time I'm wrong, I want to be right out front ..."

"I know that I didn't type them," Knox said of the Killian memos. "However, the information in there is correct," she said, adding that Killian and the other officers would "snicker about what [Bush] was getting away with."

"But he also delivered a message to "our journalistic competitors,""

"Determined not to be just a multimillion-dollar news reader like some younger-generation stars, ..."

and so on. I do think it's pro-Rather. That may be my bias, but I'm not really sure what my bias in re Rather is. I haven't watched network news in years. Is he liberal? Conservative? Beats me.