January 31, 2005

Yet another dumb survey

All blogdom is abuzz about "Some U.S. Students Say Press Freedoms Go Too Far":

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.

The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion...

Don't you just love these wacky studies? Like other studies, what's reported is different from what's actually in the study, perhaps intentionally.

Compare what's emboldened above with the actual (if their site is to be believed) question:

"Newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories"

A more intelligent survey would have split that into parts:

"Newspapers should be allowed to freely publish any story whatsoever without government approval"

and:

"Newspapers should be request government approval before printing stories that might endanger national security"

As it is, we're left wondering exactly what the students were thinking. And, this was probably by design as the surveyers wanted a catchy headline. What a dumb survey.

Note: you get to the page with the actual survey after going through a barrage of intervening sites. The hiding probably wasn't intentional, just bad design.

Posted to Politics at January 31, 2005 10:25 AM

Comments