An article in PolitiFact reported that voters will be seeing poll results in their news feeds — lots of them. But not all polls are created equal and it can be hard to put the results into the proper context.
The story goes on to offer some suggestions about what voters should pay attention to when reading polls: margins of error, the wording of polls, and the cherry-picking of results.
The Shop Talk panelists talk about the article and their own concerns about the reporting of poll results.
Shop Talk is a weekly panel discussion about journalism issues. This week’s program featured Will Buss, who teaches in the Department of Broadcasting and Journalism at Western Illinois University and advises the student editors at the Western Courier, the students at student radio station The Dog, and the WIU chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists; Rajvee Subramanian, who teaches in the Department of Broadcasting and Journalism at Western Illinois University; and TSPR News Director Rich Egger.
