Seriously.
Mitch Wertlieb just did an excellent interview of Paula Routly, publisher of Seven Days, and David Mindich, a journalism professor at St. Michael's, and it is almost beyond belief.
As you might guess, the interview conerns the Dubie campaign's misuse of a survey Seven Days did of State House insiders last year in which they identified Peter Shumlin as the “most ethically challenged” legislator. What's wrong with that, you might ask? How about the fact that Seven Days sent out 400 surveys, got about thirty back, and awarded Shumlin this dubious title based on only twelve votes?
Oh yeah, and it was all anonymous.
In the interview, Routly is somewhere between totally clueless, wilfully blind to the effects of her actions, or just floundering to get out of a bad situation. For instance, she says that Seven Days can't be held responsible for how people use their news coverage, while in almost the next breath acknowledging that Democrats started complaining to her as soon as the “survey” was published that what has happened–the misuse of the results by the Republicans–was exactly what was predictably going to happen.
Routly's rationalization is that the survey was a good way for the readers of Seven Days to get inside information about what happens in the State House, like Dick Sears's temper or David Deen's environmentalist cred. Does she really expect us to believe that there was no other way to get this information?
Obviously, there are a couple of giant holes with her argument. First, if the survey is invalid, as this one clearly was, how can she credibly claim that it was a valid basis to provide accurate information to the readers? Quick answer: she can't.
Second, Seven Days already knows how to do in-depth, probing coverage of what happens in the State House. Even without getting insiders to go on the record, which is another of Routly's rationalizations, Seven Days did a very strong story on Ed Flanagan's problems as a state senator; some people argued that the story was unfair, but I haven't heard anyone knowledgeable in what happens in the State House claim that it was inaccurate.
As you listen to the story, and I hope you will, listen carefully to Routly's answers. Even as she admits the small size of the poll, she argues that the “most ethically challenged” rating for Shumlin is “significant” because “he won by 43% of the vote, however small it was” (of their microscopic sample).
More Routly: “I don't think we can plan our coverage based on how information is going to be manipulated.”
Nobody is saying they should. On the other hand, it is entirely appropriate for news consumers to expect that they will plan their coverage based on whether their reporters were able to actually find and report a story. In this case, Routly is totally oblivious to the fact that Seven Days did a terrible job of reporting this. When they essentally got nothing in response to their survey the responsible course would have been to decide that they don't have enough information to report and spike the story.
Now they've become a tool of the Dubie campaign, they have only themselves to blame, but Shumlin and the voters of Vermont may wind up as the victims of what can only be considered a gross example of journalistic malpractice.
this had come up some time ago, but I’d forgotten about it.
I’m seeing a lot of sloppiness on the part of today’s mainstream media. I wish they’d realize how important their jobs are to a healthy democracy.
Thanks to VPR for making the effort to correct and enlighten this foolishness.
Got to wonder about the Seven Days publisher defending this survey as anything other than the meaningless fluff it is.
What would Peter Freyne have to say?
Boy do we miss you Peter and Vermont is way way the worse for your departure. GD it!
I think this story illustrates the outright lies that Dubie and his “Friends of” crew are spreading and is a reflection of that.
one can understand why they were on WCAX news last night waxing indignant (and rightly so) over the fact that a video of the Shumlin highway-stop for speeding was released to the media, but when a similar video of Salmon being arrested for drunk driving was requested for release, the request was refused! Too little, too late.
It would appear that among the telling quotes concerning their survey and its results, particularly as concerns the top category most highlighted include (here):
Now, since they are most likely more concerned about their advertising income, 7Days seems to be making revisionist attempts at a rewrite of sorts in order to distance themselves from these statements that others have picked up and have been using.
No Jack, Paula Routly can’t be that stupid, however it would appear she and others at 7Days must believe most Vermonters are.
Paula Routly does not seem to understand the concept of an unscientific poll. I’m sure if this diary was cross-posted to, say, Daily Kos with a poll containing the following options: Is Paula Routly a stupid journalist? The most stupid journalist ever? Does Paula Routly lack professional integrity? Or All of the Above, you could get hundreds of votes that portray her in an unflattering light. If someone were to send her the results of such a poll, she may actually learn something and become a better journalist for it.
Paula Routly and Seven Days bear no responsibility for how their news coverage is bent, folded, and mutilated by politicians. However, they do deserve a heapin’ helpin’ of blame for running the story in the first place.
They sent out this big survey and got back a handful of responses, too few to hang a responsible story on. What to do, what to do? They’d invested a fair bit of effort, and presumably were reluctant to kill the whole thing. So they took the path of least resistance and greatest expediency — they made a big fat front-page story out of it.
And that, my friends, is taking a sow’s ear and trying to convince us that it’s a silk purse. It was journalistically irresponsible, no two ways about it.
If only they had asked Who is the stupidest person serving in the Statehouse? There would have been a landslide for Dubie.
I am really disappointed in Seven Days for not calling their survey what it was — an unscientific, gossipy, tongue in cheek piece of fluff. I expected more of Paula.
Nobody will bother to fill out this poll ever again.
I listened to the VPR story this morning and was struck when Routly equated being votes as the “stingiest lawmaker” was the same as being the most fiscally responsible. One is a political belief, the other is most often used to refer to a character flaw. Not the same thing at all.
I suppose it’s not all that shocking that their poll had the same shoddy oversight. A fish always stinks from its head.
vote in yet another unscientific and meaningless — tongue-in-cheek — poll, here.
By the way, in this one asking who is in running as being “most ethically challenged” VT politician, Brian Dubie is currently in the lead ahead of Peter Shumlin.
Go figure!
Guess it all depends on what the question is and how it is posed as well as whom participates of course.
View poll results, here.
From the September 2010 archive at the Free Vermont Framework listserv:
Here’s a link to the Vermont Young Professionals gubernatorial candidate survey that we published this week. Not sure if anyone saw it in the whole brouhaha about the survey we published in March.
FYI, if somebody makes an ad out of it, you should blame me, not Paula.
http://7dvt.com/2010vermont-yo…
I’m a registered lobbyist. Seven Days sent me the survey and I was immediately impressed by how stoooopid it was. I am pleased to say I was part of the silent majority that took a pass on answering.
With virtually no response, Seven Days’ stoooooopid mistake was in publishing the meaningless and silly results to begin with.
Never mind Dubie, and the desperate acts of Republican operatives grasping for ‘issues’ to cover in their attack ads….
Paula clearly isn’t that stupid, having over a decade delivered to Vermonters one of the few sustained, free and unfettered sources of diverse perspectives available, whilst fewer and fewer sources of objective information survive.
That being said, publishing a “poll’ that lacks basic statistical substance was sensational, or at least unresponsible.
Daisy awards have better statistical support.
For instance, no responsible polling organization would consider, let alone publish, a poll which generated a 7.5% response rate. Common sense would dictate that such a small cohort of respondents might just be lop-sided in their enthusiasm and perspective, relative to the informed opinion of the entire 400 legislators.
A 12 out of 30 response, translated into a percentage would be 40% (or 43%). However, the margin of error on those numbers would be plus-or-minus of 18%. Which is almost half the “significant” number Paula states. So, the “true” proporiton of the “percentage” would be somewhere between 22% and 58%. In other words – too wide a confidence interval to be statistically worth bupkis, and should have lead Paula to conclude there’s not even a modicum of cause to do anything other than scrap the entire failed excercise.
The potential that Seven Days at the time of the poll might dis a potential candidate, an outsider from the group of darlings that Burlington-based politicos might prefer, may be more likely than stupidity.
Too bad you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
If Seven Days expects to be taken seriously (God help us if that’s not the case!), then it needs to distinguish between larks (who makes the coolest Pizza?) and the very serious business of political ‘news’ versus editorial page political endorsement.
As big a boner as Seven Days pulled, it pales in comparison with the distortions that Republican election managers stoop to forming the list of ‘issues’ that Dubie is endorsing. Seven Days should be embarrassed. Dubie should be ashamed.
just how all powerful 7 Days is. They put out the results of one unscientific poll, Brian Dubie and “Friends” use these same unscientific results to support an out right lie, and it seems like it’s all 7 Days fault!
This is getting pathetic.
I hope that this survey does not cost Shumlin the election. If so, Routly will be wearing this one. It’s sad; Seven Days usually does great stuff and is thorough
with their surveys.