Sunday, March 11, 2007

News poll blaming Laura Miller for the loss of the Cotton Bowl has it wrong

Dallas Blog | Tom Pauken:
“The Dallas Morning News has a front page feature story on a poll it took which supposedly blames Jerry Jones and Mayor Laura Miller for Dallas' failure to woo the Dallas Cowboys to Fair Park. According to the News, when asked who lost the Cowboys for Dallas, 30% blame Jerry Jones and 20% blame Mayor Laura Miller. Only 2% put the responsibility on former Dallas County Judge Margaret Keliher.”
Ed Cognoski responds:

The Dallas Blog headline says the poll is about the "loss of the Cotton Bowl". Yet the first sentence reports that the poll blames Jerry Jones and Laura Miller for "the failure to woo the Dallas Cowboys to Fair Park." Which is the subject of the poll? The Cowboys or the Cotton Bowl New Year's Day game?

The Dallas Blog headline singles out Laura Miller, even though the second sentence says the poll blames, primarily, Jerry Jones, who is named by 30% of those polled. Laura Miller, only 20%.

The Dallas Blog headline is wrong in still another way. It claims the News' poll itself "gets it wrong". It explains, "a poll question like the one asked by the News is really useless if one wants to determine the truth of the matter." Well, d'oh. A poll is a gauge of public sentiment, nothing more, nothing less. It's not intended to be a fact-finding investigation.

Unless Dallas Blog can point out technical flaws in the polling technique used, I'll trust that the News' gets the pulse of the public right. I believe the public does, indeed blame Jerry Jones. And I believe the public blames Laura Miller above Margaret Keliher, who all but 2% of the public probably can't even name.

Tom Pauken can. He says Keliher "has landed on her feet, making hundreds of thousands of dollars as a lobbyist representing a number of governmental entities and private companies down in Austin." Is that bad? Tom Pauken presents it that way. It turns out this poll just served as a trigger for Tom Pauken to unload on The Dallas Morning News and Margaret Keliher. Too bad Dallas Blog doesn't have an editor to send pieces like this back to rewrite.

1 comment:

Ed Cognoski said...

For a short while on Dallas Blog, there was a comment by someone (not me) saying that the Dallas Blog article reads like something written by someone with an ax to grind. The comment soon disappeared, without notice or explanation. Yet another example of censorship on Dallas Blog.