Juno News - September 26, 2022CTV skews poll results coverage against Pierre Poilievre
Episode Stats
Words per minute
217.94398
Summary
In this episode, we continue our series on fake news, and this time, we're talking about a story about a poll that suggests that more Canadians would vote for the Tories than the Liberals in a hypothetical election, but the headline doesn't tell the full story.
Transcript
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Well, so why don't we just move on to the next story here,
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because this is such a perfect example, in my opinion,
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of the tricks that legacy media try and pull on Canadians.
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They do these little things where they place certain statements in their articles,
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they play with the headlines to trick the reader
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into believing something that isn't exactly as it reads, as a headline.
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and the headline is Justin Trudeau slightly favoured over Pierre Pauly
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So when you read that, you probably think to yourself,
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well, the Liberals are, you know, they're edging up past Pierre Pauly's Conservatives.
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You probably think that more Canadians are willing to vote Liberal.
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But the problem is, actually, that's not the case.
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Because if you read past the first couple headlines,
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it says very plainly that 28% of respondents to the poll
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said they would cast a ballot for the Liberals,
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and 34% of respondents said they would part their vote with the Tories.
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I know we talked about math earlier on in the show, Andrew.
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it appears to me that more people in that poll would vote for the Conservatives
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So why exactly they think they can go along with the headline of
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Justin Trudeau slightly favoured over Pierre Pauly for Prime Minister
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when, you know, the numbers itself say that the Liberals would have fewer votes
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than the Conservatives obviously speaks volumes.
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It's only 11 paragraphs into the story, Andrew,
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where they finally say that in a preferred Prime Minister poll,
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which doesn't actually matter that much, in my opinion, on the national scale,
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Justin Trudeau edges Pierre Pauly by two percentage points.
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It's just exactly what they've been doing for many years now.
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This story is actually, I think, a test case in how media bias can work,
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because what they said is not inherently untrue.
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The poll does say that, but it also says what you know,
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and what I actually think is a more reasonable and more useful metric,
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that more people would vote Conservative than the Liberals.
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I mean, there was that old meme that circulates every now and then
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of like two people staring at a number on the ground,
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And the premise of that is that, well, you know, both people can be right.
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And then the retort to that is, well, no, one of them is wrong,
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Like someone put that down there knowing it was going to be a six or a nine.
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And here you've got multiple people that can look at the same poll
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And I think that, you know, the headline could be, you know,
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voters favor Justin Trudeau but would vote Conservative.
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Like that's actually, I think, a very useful and very concise headline.
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But just picking one or the other, which is what media does here,
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And I actually think this story in a way could be taught
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because you do have a poll that has an inherent contradiction in it.
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And it's amazing how media like to just pick the one
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Well, the journalist, you're exactly right about it being a case study,
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and it should be studied in journalism schools.
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The journalists knew exactly, as you said, Andrew,
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they had two, they had really two avenues to go with the story.
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They could go down the middle and try and blend the two together,
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Or they could take the one that counts or the one that doesn't count.
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They knew that the opinion polls of the preferred prime minister,
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which really mean nothing when it comes to the ballot,
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but you're like, ah, you know, I guess I'm not sure about Pierre,
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but I vote Conservative anyway, that is almost more useful.
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There's no room on the ballot to write your thoughts about the leader.
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It's just, you just circle the name and that's it.
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So they knew, however, that the preferred prime minister poll itself
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That's why they put it 11 paragraphs down into the story.
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But they chose to lead with it in the headline.
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That, I think, speaks volumes to where the legacy media is coming from,
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and just how willing they are to try and play tricks on the audience.
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And I think that's just, it's just, it's not right.
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That's why we talk about on the show, there's a bias of omission.
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I consider it to be bias of placement in the article.
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Most people will never get 11 paragraphs into the story
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They want to skim the headlines and get the story there.
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I just think it's a classic trick that the legacy media play