A repeat participant in focus groups televised on Fox and conducted
by pollster Frank Luntz casts doubt on the credibility of both
Luntz and the network.
Fair and balanced. That’s the Fox News marketing slogan.
Sharp eyed viewers of Frank Luntz’ undecided voter focus
group sessions on the news channel, however, may have caught
the channel stacking the deck, so to speak. As pointed out by
TPM Muckraker and a number of bloggers, one panel participant
in the January 6 Luntz focus group "actually appeared in
a prior Luntz Fox News focus group four months prior."
In that session on September 5, 2007, after a Fox News political
debate, members of the Luntz post-debate focus group, supposedly
randomly chosen because they were undecided voters, were interviewed
by Luntz on their impressions of the candidates. Citizen "Chuck"
was called upon and spoke of John McCain as being a "viable
opponent," and Hillary Clinton as "too divisive."
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Fast-forward to the January 6, 2008 Fox Forum in New Hampshire.
Frank Luntz again was talking to another focus group of supposedly
randomly chosen undecided voters after the debate. First up
in the video is a woman who has decided on Mitt Romney because
he spoke about competition with China and because, in her opinion,
his corporate experience and leadership would be good for America.
Then Luntz chose another individual from the audience to offer
his views. Surprise, surprise, it was the very same "Chuck"
as four months earlier. This time "Chuck" is pro-Romney
and says, Romney is a "viable opponent," as in the
forum he came across "clearly and concisely." As TPM
Muckraker pointed out, "Chuck" is easily "identifiable
through his appearance and voice -- either that, or he's got
an identical twin."
Fox News, via Hannity and Colmes, declared the results of the
focus group to be "surprising feedback." Said Luntz,
it’s "quite interesting to hear what our voters had
to say."
What is more interesting is the fact that Fox News and Frank
Luntz are either incompetent or conniving in including the same
person in more than one focus group. A cynic might be tempted
to think that "Chuck" was a plant. One expert speculated
that Luntz was incompetent. From TPM Muckraker:
While this isn't necessarily evidence that Luntz
has used actors or plants in his segments, it "says there's
something sloppy at best about his recruitment process, Mark
Blumenthal, a veteran of the polling business and founder of
Pollster.com, told me. "If you see a respondent show up
twice, it's a sign of professional respondents leaking through."
In fact, the inclusion of repeat attendees in Luntz focus groups
is intentional. According to TPM Muckraker, Luntz is "conducting
a ‘study of human behavior’ with his dial tests
(a mechanism that registers viewers' moment by moment reaction)
he said, not a traditional focus group. And if you ‘want
to understand how people change their points of view, you have
to ask them over time and multiple times. This is how social
biologists do it. This is anthropology.... If you're goal is
to study how opinions change over time, of course you've got
to call them back.’"
Critics have alleged, however, that Luntz and Fox have been
trying to manipulate public opinion rather than report the news
in a "fair and balanced" manner. Luntz denies the
charge: "That's ridiculous.... I'm sure that the person
who said that doesn't have a PhD, probably doesn't have a masters,
and doesn't know what they're talking about."
That kind of response does little to enhance Luntz’ flagging
credibility. In fact, he is a master propagandist and has been
called on the carpet for his antics in the past. Writing in
Salon in 2000, Dante Chini pointed out: "In 1997, Luntz
was formally reprimanded by the American Association for Public
Opinion Research for his work polling on the GOP's 1994 ‘Contract
with America’ campaign document." When challenged
by the AAPOR to substantiate his polling claims related to that
effort, Luntz either couldn’t or wouldn’t, leading
to the reprimand.
Luntz came under fire again just a few years later. In 2000,
the Washington Post reported that the National Council on Public
Polls "censured pollster Frank Luntz for allegedly mischaracterizing
on MSNBC the results of focus groups he conducted during the
Republican Convention."
That sounds familiar. Whatever Luntz is doing on Fox with his
"focus groups," its not science and its not even social
science. Instead, it is an example of yellow journalism and
nearly undisguised political propaganda designed to be misleading
and manipulative. But, have we come to expect anything else
from the very unbalanced and unfair reporting the mainstream
media has offered us this election?
