Interesting email which has been sitting on the back-burner for the past couple of days, concerning a purported Mount Ogden Golf Course-related telephone survey, which is reportedly being conducted in the Ogden area. Our reader's missive contains a query which we'll pass on to our gentle readers:
Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 4:58 PMGiven the timing, we believe it's reasonable to infer that this "poll" may be related to the pending Ogden municipal election, and that one or more council candidates may be interested in accomplishing something other than collecting and analyzing response data.
Has anyone gotten a phone call from an independent research group asking questions about raising taxes to cover the $250,000 deficit that the Mt. Ogden Golf Course costs the city? The 1st question was about the million dollar revamp that's needed to improve the course. I asked the questioner who was conducting this survey and said that I had an issue with the assumption behind the 1st question--mainly that it assumed that millions were needed to revamp it. Some of the other questions involved re-zoning the areas adjacent to the course.
Argh!
Becky McShane
So to fine tune our reader's query we'll ask this: Is someone currently in the process of conducting an election-related "push poll?"
Broadly defined, a push poll is a political campaign technique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll. The Center for Media and Democracy provides a slightly narrower definition: "A push poll is where, using the guise of opinion polling, disinformation about a candidate or issue is planted in the minds of those being 'surveyed'. Push-polls are designed to shape, rather than measure, public opinion." Notably, legitimate pollsters regard push polling as "unethical," at least in its more aggressive manifestations.
Notably, the pollster in the instant case evidently attempted to predicate the line of questioning on the assumption that the Mt. Ogden Golf Course in fact actually suffers a $250,000 annual deficit. Encouragingly, our alert reader didn't take the bait.
Ogden Voters are of course no strangers to political telemarketing abuse. As our readers will remember, the Godfrey administration was accused of using this same deceptive telemarketing technique in 2006, when gondolas were the "hot" item on the "visionary" Godfrey agenda. Are we seeing a re-run of this unethical tactic yet again?
Our readers will of course also recall another abuse of the infernal telephone autodialer in October of 2007, at the tail end of the 2007 mayoral election runup. Who can forget the completely bogus Jon Huntsman endorsement, which Boss Godfrey ultimately "pulled" at the then-Utah governor's "request?"
Perhaps might be helpful to get more reader input on this. Are there other WCF readers who've been contacted regarding this purported poll? Can a few of our gentle readers fill in the nature of some of the other "survey" questions, such as those involving re-zoning issues? Can anyone provide more information on this issue at all?
We believe that Ms. McShane presents a fine topic for discussion on this otherwise slow-news Saturday morning; and we'll therefore offer her a hearty Weber County Forum Tip O' The Hat, for bringing this issue to the forefront.
Who will be the first to comment?
