John Zogby on The Way We’ll Be

Posted Tuesday, September 15, 2009

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Despite the raucous town hall meetings and all the red-state-blue-state rhetoric, John Zogby says America is not the fragmented place many think it. He knows, he says, because he has asked America—or at least a statistically significant number of Americans. Zogby comes to northeast Ohio this month to take part in a Cleveland Council of World Affairs event. Tuesday morning at 9, he'll chat with ideastream's® Dan Moulthrop about the power of the polls, and what they tell us about the way we'll be.

Guests

John Zogby pollster Zogby International, author, The Way We'll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream.

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Pat in Cleveland 9:28 AM 9/15/09

part of what is fueling the divisive and acrimonious debate in America is this false sense of parity and balanced reporting mandated by the news media moguls. It means every story is distorted as a result - we need to see these ‘one offs ‘ reported as just that!!...a good example is the ‘Tea party’ on Saturday - what is the representative sample with 50-70K people in America compared with the general population. It is ‘ant’ on an elephant’s arse.

Pat in Cleveland 9:39 AM 9/15/09

Mr Zogby is missing the point of my comment - in a democracy the balance and numbers DO matter - reporting in a ‘in context’ manner, it reports fringe groups that DO NOT represent the majority of Americans as being much larger and more impactful than it is or should be...isn’t that what Polls should do in part by informing Americans where they stand in porportion (sp) to their fellow Americans?

Pat in Cleveland 9:48 AM 9/15/09

OK, last entry and I don’t expect this to get ‘aired (btw thank you for addressing this important topic that I feel passionate about) but he made my point with his respone- by GIVING them the air time, it MISREPRESENTS their numbers and it DOES fan their importance in a damaging way the American debate - just like yelling FIRE in a movie theatre is wrong, so is giving these fringe groups this coverage - it holds the rest of cerebral, rational America hostage…
thanks for hearing me.