a thought about news organizations and bias

OK, after the second presidential debate I thought I'd look at what independent pollsters told us about who won, and then look at the individual online news organizations to see if their audience reflected the scientific polls. The independent poll found it a statistical tie between Mr Kerry and Mr Bush.

I see the CNN audience as left leaning and thought their poll would reflect that. I also believed the MSNBC audience would be a little less left, and the Foxnews.com crowd to be hard right.

CNN and MSNBC didn't let me down. The CNN vote was about 75:25 Kerry over Bush. MSNBC showed a 63:37 Kerry over Bush. I think people go to read and see what reinforces their views about life. The implication here for me is that CNN is heavily biased to the left and attracts that crowd and that MSNBC is less so.

But the FOX poll surprised me. Just as the scientific poll showed a statistical dead heat, so did FOX's poll of its visitors! Does this mean FOX is more fair and balanced after all? Interesting thought.

Something fun to do is to look for the polls on these different online news places and predict what the results are before you check them. You may not be surprised at what you see.