Usually I watch the recorded first third of KGW's Portland 11 pm news in a semi-comatose state, aware of what's on the TV only enough to keep fast-forwarding through the seemingly endless string of car crashes, dog bites, and other "if it bleeds, it leads" stories that bore my wife and I.
But last night — gasp! — KGW actually mentioned some national political news early on.
Unfortunately, they got it wrong. Though I can't remember anchor Laural Porter's exact words, the gist of what she said was, "Polls split on who won the second presidential debate, Obama or Romney."
Wow, that woke me fast. Split?
Political junkie that I am, I'd been following the "snap polls" closely, since I wanted to see if other people considered that Obama did as good a job as I thought he did. I didn't remember hearing about a single poll that gave Romney a win.
So this morning I headed to the KGW web site, found the "contact us" page, and composed a message under the "TV News Corrections" category.k
Last night on the 11 pm news I heard Laural Porter (I believe it was) say that post-second-debate polls showed a split between an Obama and a Romney win. Huh? Every poll I'm aware of favored Obama, with more people saying that Obama won the debate. Nate Silver of the highly respected Five Thirty Eight blog had an "Instant Reaction" post where he listed a bunch of post-debate polls. Every one showed an Obama win. See:
Your reporting sounded wrong to me. Please show me the "split" poll assessments of who won. In fact, please show me even one respectable poll that showed a Romney win (I'm not counting a Fox News internet poll of viewers, or something like that).
KGW needs to issue a correction unless you can back up your assertion. News organizations should report the facts. Even if you can find one poll that showed a Romney win, the clear majority of polls definitely show that Obama won the second debate.
No response so far from KGW.
Maybe they're waiting for the 11 o'clock news to make a big deal out of their mea culpa, and will publicly thank an alert viewer who fact-checked their erroneous reporting. But if so, why haven't they asked for a photo of me to accompany their lavish praise?
Seriously, though…
Being an avid watcher of HBO's "Newsroom," I'm aware that interns and other lowly staffers are available to do basic news grunt work. A minute or two spent Googling "who won second presidential debate polls" would have led to a different script for Laural Porter.
Unless KGW gets its national political facts from Fox News. Which is just about the only explanation I can think of for KGW's mistaken analysis of who pollsters say won last Tuesday's debate.
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Obama Lost the first poll by a wide margin,The second poll was a tie.
R.E. Caffrey, not true. You’re entitled to your opinions, but not to your facts. Reality belongs to everybody, not just conservatives who prefer to keep their head in the sand.
Read the Five Thirty Eight post. It cites a bunch of instant polls conducted after the second debate. Obama won every one.