Horrible journalism?
The Indian Express reports on the Natwar Singh - Volcker controversy:
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Even before the government decides to ‘sacrifice’ External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh, people across the globe have given their verdict.
According to an opinion poll conducted by Expressindia.com, 88.05 per cent of the Netizens have given their judgment in favour of Natwar Singh’s resignation. While 10.53 per cent have given him a clean chit, 1.42 per cent readers have reserved their view.
The glaring question is, as the country’s External Affairs Minister, how can Singh continue to chair such a prestigious post. Being implicated in a UN report, he has lost the credibility to handle India’s relations with the outside world and has become more of a national embarrassment.
It turns out that Expressindia is talking about the poll conducted at their website. See the results here. It's amazing that Expressindia doesn't bother much to spell it out clearly that this was an online poll with "self-selected" participants and not a scientific poll conducted with "randomly selected" participants. Obviously an online poll doesn't have much value as everyone understands that it reflects the biases of the visitors of that particular website.
Asking for a minister's resignation based on such a poll is very funny! In their earlier polls, 53% agreed with Shiv Sena that the page 3 culture resulted in an increase in rape incidents, 73% were against the state mourning for Pope John Paul II, and 59% thought the US shouldn't have denied Narendra Modi a visa. Did the Indian Express advocate their readers' opinion on these matters on their pages? 85% of the online poll participants supported the slum demolition drive in Mumbai. Now that says a lot about the disconnect between online poll outputs and what the public think. [Link.]
It's disgusting that a premier newspaper cheats its readers like this. Journalism of courage? Indeed!
posted by Anand @ 11/04/2005
18 comments
18 Comments:
Like you rightly said, this reflects the biases of both the newspaper and its readers. They tend towards this very nationalistic / (soft) Hindutva view.. I still like the Hindu, their biases match mine!
rightly said. They most often do not publish your comments too if it does not match with their way of thinking.
Funny you should get so worked up about a poll done by IE. You sure didn't fell the same way back then. You used the poll results to draw your own conclusions, even the Express hadn't mentioned anything about their methodology back then too. So what has changed?.
Rajagopal
Pennathur, lod, Mridul, and Rajagopal -- Thanks for commenting.
Pennathur -- I understand your other concerns. My point is that this was a case of horrible reporting, passing off an online poll as an opinion poll. I would like to know what you specifically think about it.
Rajagopal -- I had replied to you there! And I repeat that! And please read the full thing.
Good one, Anand.
Yes, you replied to me back then, but the reply didn't address my point back then and still it doesn't. I asked you why you would cite the results of a poll done on ie.com, with no information on the methodology. You claimed that "Looks like, at least for many of the Indian Express readers, Lalu bashing, Mumbai beautification, moral policing, all go together!". You didn't care about the details of the poll or the sample size of the pollor the "certain basic things that go into the design of a poll". You drew a conclusion without bothering about any of the basic things that go into the design of a poll.
It seems you have a concern about the methodology with regard to the poll about Natwar Singh. Why shouldn't they (whoever wrote the article you cite) do what you did?. It sure is irresponsible. But when has that stopped you. I repeat my question - what has changed?.
What else can you expect from a right wing media. BJP is yet to digest their poll defeat. Indian express, an hard core right wing newspaper, is also feeling the same. Thatz why BJP and IE are making all sorts of noises. I wouldn't be surprised if BJP demands Manmohan Singh's resignation if someone pisses in Delhi streets. You can then see IE conducting a poll asking whether Manmohan Singh should resign for the piss incident.
Rajagopal -- Indian Express says:
According to an opinion poll conducted by Expressindia.com, 88.05 per cent of the Netizens have given their judgment in favour of Natwar Singh’s resignation.
I would have said, and I think it's okay to conclude:
Looks like, at least many Indian Express readers are in favour of Natwar Singh's resignation.
And there's a lot of difference between those two statements.
When I qouted their online poll figures, I made it a point to stress that online poll results like those do not count too much. I expected the Express to do the same as well.
Pennathur -- "Netizens" in the title (or in the text) do not make it clear that this was just a self selected online poll. Because you can have a proper opinion poll among netizens too. The right thing to do would have been to clearly say that this wasn't a scientifically designed opinion poll. That's good journalistic practice. See this for instance.
As for their edit, I have no problems with that stand. I think there should be an immediate, time-bound, thorough inquiry, and Natwar should go if found guilty.
We can be admirers of a newspaper (or anything) by criticising criticisable points too, right?
Krish -- You surely don't think I have provoked the readers enough, do you? :))
Yes, EI should have mentioned how they conducted the polls. I found no mention of that anywhere. It ls also strange that all comments on the news item you mention are full of hate.
We can be admirers of a newspaper (or anything) by criticising criticisable points too, right?
I believe that admirers should point out such things. After all, you want it to be better!
You "for many of IE's readers...". Could you kindly tell us how many readers felt that way. What percentage of IE's readers do you thought it represented at that time?. Without any details of the methodology, you were able to conclude something about for many of IE's readers. Doesn't seem very academically rigorous to me.
Thanks Vishnu.
Rajagopal -- Is that what you wanted to say? If you had said that the first time, we wouldn't have disagreed at all! Not just that post, my blog posts are never "academically rigorous". Whatever I write rigorously, I try to get those published in peer reviewed journals!
Pennathur -- Fine! You have your biases, I have mine. I consider The Hindu the best Indian newspaper. But that doesn't stop me from criticising The Hindu either! As for the beedi-jhola types, well, I have nothing against them. In fact many people say that I'm one such. I do not know.
Good post!
(though I do think Natwar Singh should resign)...
One of the important virtues of a news paper is to convey the opinion of the people to the government. So conducting a poll is a very legitimate way of gauging the public mood. All the talk of sample size etc makes very little sense. Afterall they do say that its an online poll and what sample size is good enough? A billion? Besides people who vote on these polls are likely to be more informed about the issue than the guy on the street who would blissfully say whatever he wants. I'm not a flag-bearer for Indian Express, but by coming out strongly against a source of national embarassment (aka Natwar), Indian Express has indeed displayed "Journalism of Courage".
Thanks Qalandar.
Balaji Ganesan -- people who vote on these polls are likely to be more informed about the issue than the guy on the street who would blissfully say whatever he wants. What makes you think so? It's not clear to me at all.
Shivam -- You are right!
Balaji Ganesan -- people who vote on these polls are likely to be more informed about the issue than the guy on the street who would blissfully say whatever he wants. What makes you think so? It's not clear to me at all.
Well, if you do a random sampling, it might as well represent the opinion of the people. Vast majority of the people ofcourse are likely to know very little about the issue at hand. So if you put a question like "Should Natwar resign because of this scandal?", a common man who is disgusted with the politicians anyway is likely to say "Yes". But a person who has bothered to come online and check out the polls section may as well have read a couple of articles on the story and hence can give an informed opinion.
Balaji -- There's a valid point in what you say. But it's equally plausible that the common man says "No" because the common man is facing a thousand other problems (which never make it to most of our newspapers) and he is not bothered about the minister's resignation. In any case my point wasn't whether or not the minister should go. He should, if it's proved that he is guilty. My point was about simple journalistic ethics. And I hope you see that as well.
Indian Express has been better newspaper compared to the commercial rag like TOI. The Tribune, The Hindu and the Indian Express the core of good newspapers in India.
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