Polls Lie. Ratings Don't.

The Nation's Eric Alterman isn't stupid, but apparently he doesn't mind playing stupid when he has a point to make.

Check out this column, in which Alterman wonders why tabloid-style journalism and right-wing opinion have become so prevalent in the mass media:

Both have been routinely justified by the media moguls by what they deem to be the demands of the marketplace. "We'd like to report on important stuff," goes the argument, "but these bozos want Paris and Britney, preferably with Rush or O'Reilly reporting."

In fact, if decades of public opinion data are to be believed, both aspects of these arguments are false. The vast majority of Americans profess little interest in tabloid trash and right-wing reaction.

Wow. They profess that, do they? Well, then, it must be so.

Of course it's not. Though he doesn't say so here, I'm guessing Alterman is familiar with the concept of response bias, which pollsters have to grapple with every time they design a questionnaire. Survey respondents routinely answer questions as they think they're supposed to rather than as they actually would if they were being candid. So an Us Weekly subscriber, asked if she would like to see more Paris Hilton stories on the nightly news, says no rather than have the interviewer think she's an idiot. But put her alone in front of a TV when a Paris story comes on and she'll respond the honest way: with her eyeballs.

None of this is to defend the producers and editors who practice lowest-common-denominator journalism and fill our airwaves and newsholes with garbage. But they do it for a reason: because people crave it. Whether they admit to it or not.

Earlier: Another dishonest use of "empirical" polling data.