Shocker! Or so it seemed at the time.
"Poll: Richardson leads Secretary of State race." That link is to a Google cache version of a story that has been taken down by the Salem Statesman Journal.
I read the story online last night.
It really surprised me that supposedly Republican Dennis Richardson was leading Democrat Brad Avakian 47% to 38%. A Republican hasn't won a statewide office in Oregon for a long time. And the story by reporter Gordon Friedman said:
The numbers suggest the first time in nearly a decade that a Republican has led in polls in a race for statewide office, said Jim Moore, professor and director of the Tom McCall Center for Policy Innovation at Pacific University. Moore said that by his recollection, Gordon Smith was the last Republican to command such a lead in the polls over a Democrat. Smith lost his seat in the U.S. Senate in 2008 to Jeff Merkley.
But today I saw a Blue Oregon post that demolished the credibility of the Statesman Journal story. Here's how the post starts out:
It was the kind of headline that makes political watchers in Oregon sit up and take notice:
Poll: Richardson leads Secretary of State race
According to the story in the Statesman-Journal, Republican Dennis Richardson was up 47% to 38% over Democrat Brad Avakian in a poll paid for by GOP gubernatorial candidate Bud Pierce.
But it didn't take long before the SSJ made one little, tiny, but oh-so-critical update:
It randomly sampled 535 people ... 440 of the respondents said they were Republicans.
That's right: According to this "random sample" poll, 82% of Oregonians are self-identifying Republicans. HAHHAHA.
And just a few hours later, the SSJ yanked the story offline entirely.
Pretty embarrassing for the Statesman Journal, especially since it is the community newspaper in Oregon's capital. The revised online story (shown in the Google cache version) has the update mentioned by Blue Oregon. Here's a screenshot from the post:
Apparently the Statesman Journal was the only newspaper in Oregon to bite on what likely was either a Dennis Richardson or Bud Pierce press release.
Or maybe the info came from Action Solutions, a right-wing polling firm that Pierce has used for a supposedly "random poll" (yeah, right...) that showed him in a virtual tie with Kate Brown (about as unbelievable as Richardson being ahead of Avakian).
Here's what I don't understand about the Statesman Journal story that got trashed: there were several warning signs that the poll showing Richardson ahead was garbage.
First, any poll that showed Richardson nine points ahead of Avakian in the Secretary of State race should have set off "WTF?" warning bells in a reporter's mind. Like I said, I was shocked when I read the story. I found it unbelievable. But since I have a predisposition to believe what I read in a newspaper, I was prepared to believe it.
If, and this is a big IF, the poll was credible. I'm pretty sure that Gordon Friedman's original story didn't list what firm conducted the poll. I just assumed that this was a reputable organization, or the Statesman Journal wouldn't be reporting the poll results.
So either Friedman wasn't concerned about the fact that the poll was paid for by Republican Governor candidate Bud Pierce and conducted by a right-wing polling firm, or he didn't know who conducted the poll before he wrote his story. Either way, this is poor journalism.
Second, no matter who conducts a poll (meaning, even if it is a reputable survey research firm), I've found that reporters typically check the validity of the respondents who were sampled. In a political poll, this includes checking whether the distribution of Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters is close to the overall breakdown for the country, state, or whatever.
Wikipedia says that the December 2015 breakdown for registered Oregon voters is 38% Democratic, 30% Republican, and 32% other affiliation. Yet as Blue Oregon pointed out, the Bud Pierce poll showing Richardson ahead of Avakian was based on a sample that was 82% Republican.
How was the Statesman Journal suckered into essentially reprinting a GOP press release? My search of Google News for "richardson leads avakian poll" turned up only one hit: the Statesman Journal story that got taken down after the poll results turned out to be political garbage.
Thus unless the Statesman Journal was the only newspaper that was informed about the Richardson/Avakian poll (unlikely, but possible), the Statesman demonstrated an unusual proclivity to "bite" on a story that should never have been offered up as journalistic fare to newspaper readers.
I'm inclined to blame Statesman Journal management and editors more than the reporter who wrote the story, Gordon Friedman. I've found Friedman to be a diligent and competent reporter. Sure, he may have screwed up on this story, but I feel that the larger screw-up is how journalism is being practiced at the Statesman Journal these days.
Being a follower of Friedman's Twitter account, I know that he got a "rookie" award from the Oregon chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Congratulations, Gordon. I also noticed your tweet about how many stories you've written for the Statesman Journal during your first year with the newspaper:
I have no idea if 450 stories in a year is typical for a newspaper reporter. It seems like a lot. Let's take off 115 days, say, from 365 for days off and vacation. That makes 450 stories in about 250 days. Roughly, two a day.
It takes me about two hours to research and write a 1,000 word blog post -- about the length of this one. Sometimes I base a post on attending a meeting, or otherwise getting out-and-about, that adds several more hours. But a newspaper reporter like Friedman likely has to do considerably more telephoning and interviewing in person.
For example, Friedman did a major job of investigative reporting when he delved into correctional officer discipline in Oregon prisons. That may count as just one of his 450 stories in a single year.
So this is why I feel that Statesman Journal management deserves the bulk of the blame for the Richardson/Avakian poll story screwup. Journalistic quality at the newspaper has gone steadily downhill as experienced reporters are laid off or voluntarily depart, while new hires are underpaid and overworked.
As a long-time (since 1977) subscriber, I have this crazy idea that I should be able to read factual, important, thought-provoking local and state news in my community newspaper. That really isn't happening anymore, not compared to the quality of reporting during most of the years I've been a subscriber.
Thus I view this latest journalistic failing within a larger context: the Statesman Journal's transformation from a decent community newspaper into a shallow "click-bait" media outlet that emphasizes quantity over quality, and sensationalism over solid reporting.
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