POLLS AS NEWS: A METAPHORICAL DOG CHASING ITS OWN TAIL

There has always beens something about the Beast running "news" stories featuring telephone polls that has bothered me. I mean, how is it news that some guys call up some other guys and the called guys tell the first guys how they're gonna vote?

I think I've finally gotten my arms around why the concept of polling as news doesn't wash for me. The voters are sitting in their houses and they already believe they know for whom they will vote. The Beast, or contractors feeding the Beast, then calls them up and asks for whom they will vote. The voter tells the Beast. The Beast then takes the information the Voter gave the Beast and Beams it right back out the Voter, who is the very guy the Beast got it from in the first place. How is that news? You tell the same guy who just told you something the same information right back to him and you're informing him of what, exactly?

Ah, says the Beast. We're informing him of scientifically valid interpretations of the information he just gave us, that's "news". No, that's an editorial opinion. If you're gonna give an editorial opinion, label it an editorial opinion. Or, at best, it's a digested conclusion unless you tell the poor Voter what the hell you did to the information he just gave you to turn it into News.

I'm not saying poll-watching is not fun. I'm not saying polls are always inaccurate, fattening or biased. I'm certainly not saying that the cross-tabs on polls aren't useful in campaigning.

What I'm saying is the that the Voters are ones doing the thinking. It cannot possibly be news, then, to tell them what they are thinking.