Just popped into WaPo to ask a question about why cable tv is so anti-stimulus:
Rochester, N.Y.: Is the debate over the stimulus package shaping up to be a bit like the debate over the impeachment of president Clinton, where media elites are on one side — against the stimulus — and the American public is on the other — for the stimulus? Aside from one partisan Rasmussen poll, polls consistently show support for Obama and House Democrats on the stimulus, but nearly everyone on TV and in the opinion pages is on the Republican side.
Robert Barnes: I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with your premise. Seems more likely to me that the polls show one thing but the constituent calls to congressional offices against the stimulus are showing something else.
I now know that the way to make my opinions heard by the Village is to send silly putty and balls to my Congressmen.
Update: This is funny too from the same Q&A.
Dunn Loring, Va.: Do the Post editors get together and decide what question their reporters should ask at a presidential news conference, or did Michael Fletcher come up with his question about A-Rod on his own? If the latter, how much longer while he be on the White House beat?
Robert Barnes: I don’t know how Michael decided to ask that question, but he’s certainly got people talking. From what I see reading the papers or watching tv, there is a lot of interest in the A-Rod story, so what’s wrong with getting Obama’s reaction? I know when I was a kid, about the only way I would have read about the president was if he showed up in the sports section._______________________
Stafford, Va.: How about that hard hitting A-Rod question from your Post colleague? Was that really more important than asking about AIDs funding, Zimbabwe, global warming, Venezuala, NAFTA, lack of NATO assistance with Afghanistan and a host of other issues?
Robert Barnes: But I feel I should give voice to the other side.
Darius
I’ve read Barnes’ answer three times now, and I still don’t get it. Is he saying that existence of these nutjobs somehow disproves the polls, or that it’s the media’s job to give these nutjobs a disproportionate amount of coverage, or what?
DougJ
I think he’s saying that the number of balls and things of silly putty that Congressman receive is a more accurate measure of public opinion than polling is.
gex
I’ll take statistical sampling of the population to indicate where Americans’ opinion sits over a the opinions of a self-selected sample any day. Especially if the self-selected sample is the remaining rabid GOP base.
BrklynLibrul
Beyond moronic . . .
Lola
My sister is a journalist, but I hate the rest of them.
spot check billy
I’m afraid I’ll have to disagree with your premise, and I don’t care how obviously cherry picked and hypothetical my supporting data has to be to do so. Village consensus? Whatever could you mean?
[/Barnes]
DougJ
I was happy with Barnes’ answer. It makes no sense but it’s an honest insight into how he thinks. I find that valuable.
It’s interesting to me because it’s another facet of the right-center nation stuff they love: even when polls and actual elections show Democratic dominance, a few kooky Rush listeners stalking their Congressmen shows we’re really a conservative country.
It’s stupid, but it does seem to be their thought process.
zzyzx
It’s another example of what I call the law of large numbers. 10% of the US population is 30,000,000 people. In the Internet era it’s easy to live in that community and feel like it’s so large, that’s it’s clearly a majority. Mobilize .01% of the population and you could easily tie up the phone lines of Congress.
Just Some Fuckhead
Great question, Doug. HellifInow what his answer meant tho. Is he appealing to the myth of the great silent conservative majority?
Steeplejack
Was going to skip over this without comment but couldn’t shake a nagging thought: am I alone in having the feeling that the majority of people who call their rep’s offices are at the crank-y, "get off my lawn" end of the spectrum? I consider myself fairly "political," and I can’t remember the last time I was moved to call, or even write, my congressional rep about something. (Much better to rant on the Intertubes!)
My point being that I would trust a poll of general public opinion much more than some measurement of "calls to congressmen." Those seem too easily orchestrated as, e.g., dittohead campaigns or single-issue crusades. Just sayin’.
4tehlulz
So a phone invasion by Paultards and Red State is a good metric for public opinion on the stimulus.
lol ‘k
Keith
I’ve written to my congressmen about issues before – highly charged partisan ones where my representatives do not share my view – and quit doing it because every single time their response was essentially "I appreciate you writing in, but I am right on this and you are wrong so I’m voting with my party". The divisions on this issue are along party lines and pretty strictly enforced by the caucuses so far, so constituent calls as a metric is playing to the base.
JL
But, but,but.. His answer does not even make sense. Maybe he was responding to another question, or maybe he equates polls with those who only call their rep. or senator.
DougJ
“Cranky, get off my lawn” is probably putting it charitably. A disproportionate number of the calls come from people who are crazy, possibly dangerously so.
That doesn’t mean Congressmen should ignore all calls, but it’s important that they distinguish between callers with real points and those who think they’re be chased by black helicopters.
The Other Steve
That’s my problem.
I never call up my Senator to complain.
Obviously then my opinion doesn’t count, even when I vote.
Nikki
How would he know the number and/or type of calls that are going to the Congressional reps? Does he call them up and ask? And why would journalists find that metric more reliable than the statistical data generated by polls?
norbizness
Shorter Robert Barnes: Me lose brain? Uh-oh!
Dave
What’s everyone complaining about? It’s obvious that a random amount of calls without any controls as to whom it is that is calling is a much more reliable metric than a discrete amount of individuals who are chosen by a set of carefully-established criteria using well-established mathematical properties. Duh!
Zifnab
@Keith: I’ve tried shooting the occasional email to my Senator or Congressman and gotten about the same response. If I wanted GOP propaganda, I’d just visit the GOP website. So I only bother when I’m really frustrated.
That said, I do send of emails to Senators and Reps outside my state or district that I still support. But communicating with guys like Big John Cornyn or Pete "Cheney’s best friend" Olsen are a fucking lost cause. They clearly know way better than I do.
Zifnab
Oh, one more thing. Fuck both of them. What polls? Which constituent calls? What the crap are either of them talking about?
Am I supposed to just nod and smile and assume they just read shit I’m not aware of? Could they maybe point their readerships into the direction of their source material? In shorter, friendlier internet speak: LINK PLZ?!
Reverend Dennis
I’ve written to my Congress critters numerous times. They all seem to have one of those email programs that latches on to a keyword in my text and then spews out a boilerplate reply.
So I write:
"How in the world could you vote against the S-CHIP extension? You have your head so far up your ass that you need windshield wipers to get the shit out of your eyes."
The reply:
"Thank you for your support. Congressman/Senator Douchenozzle is a strong supporter of free market solutions for America’s health care needs. Congressman/Senator Douchnozzle believes that federal spending must be reigned in…"
DougJ
The ones we’ve been talking about on this blog for the last couple days.
Robin G.
Bullshit explanation. How many times did liberals flood Congress with phone calls and emails and faxes in the last eight years? I, for example, remember waiting on hold for almost 45 minutes to tell my Senator that if he voted in favor of the Alito confirmation I’d send $20 a week to his primary opponent for the next two years. What about telecom immunity?
If constituents tying up the phone lines was the real reason for Barnes’ opinion on the mood of the people, he’d have been singing a different tune during the Bush administration.
sgwhiteinfla
Dougj
Like I said to you in the other thread, its all about that phone call phony outrage that the Republicans are just better at than we are. We don’t have a progressive Rushbo exhorting us to call in every day and complain over some non existent bullshit. The other sides do and the Village thinks thats all that matters. See also Zoe Baird and switchboard polling.
norbizness
Addendum: Why I laugh?
slaney black
Barnes just straight-up admitted the press has been taking an anti-stimulus position. He didn’t deny, he excused. That is just goddamn stunning
Zifnab
@DougJ: I didn’t realize Rochester, N.Y. frequently visited our site. And that still doesn’t answer my question. What polls? The Research 2000 polls? The Rasmussen polls? CNN? Gallup? Zogby? Readers don’t get to look the shit up for themselves because they don’t know what the hell their looking for.
I’m sure I could dig up a poll on FOX News that doggedly insists Obama is a secret commie muslim according to 83.6% of respondents. I’m sure I could dig up a DKos poll that argues Obama "Isn’t liberal enough" according to 59.8% of respondents.
Likewise, what calls? What are people saying? They categorically oppose the stimulus? They want more tax cuts? They want more infrastructure? They hate socialism and think this is "creeping socialism" they’ve been warned of? Are they from red states? Blue states? Which Congresspeople are getting called? Who knows? Certainly not us because its not in the damn article.
Shawn in ShowMe
Who needs scientific data when you’ve got All-American boys Bobby Barnes counting wingnut phone calls and Tommy Friedman counting Applebee’s signs? That’s the whole ball game right there.
TheHatOnMyCat
The Republicans spent years telling us that they are too noble to govern by listening to polls.
So, we don’t listen to polls.
Next jackalope, please.
PK
The other side of AIDS, NAFTA, Afganistan, Venezuela and NATO is A-Rod? Who knew?
Scott
I quit writing to my reps because they were all Republicans and it was clear that all they cared about was sucking on that sweet, sweet Bushpenis.
As for Robert Barnes, that’s just one more piece of evidence that the national corporate media is broken and corrupted beyond the ability of anyone to repair. The proper solution would be to take the reporters, anchors, producers, editors, publishers and owners of the NYT, WaPo, WashTimes, LATimes, CNN, Fox, Time, and Newsweek, put them inside a leaky rocket, shoot them into the sun, and start over from scratch.
ricky
Would it be fair to say Mr. Barnes actually does not disagree with the premise but does not understand it?
Zifnab
@DougJ: I didn’t realize Rochester, N.Y. frequently visited our site. And that still doesn’t answer my question. What polls? The Research 2000 polls? The Rasmussen polls? CNN? Gallup? Zogby? Readers don’t get to look the stuff up for themselves because they don’t know what the hell their looking for.
I’m sure I could dig up a poll on FOX News that doggedly insists Obama is a secret commie muslim according to 83.6% of respondents. I’m sure I could dig up a DKos poll that argues Obama "Isn’t liberal enough" according to 59.8% of respondents.
Likewise, what calls? What are people saying? They categorically oppose the stimulus? They want more tax cuts? They want more infrastructure? They hate socialism and think this is "creeping socialism" they’ve been warned of? Are they from red states? Blue states? Which Congresspeople are getting called? Who knows? Certainly not us because its not in the freak’n article.
Zifnab
GRRR! STOP CENSORING MY FREAK’N POSTS! Hate hate hate hate hate.
Napoleon
Nobody has comment on this yet, but what does Barnes worldview tell you about how the press reacts to comments they get from wingnut readers when Rush or Focus on the Family or whoever sics them on the press.
low-tech cyclist
The other side of AIDS, NAFTA, Afganistan, Venezuela and NATO is A-Rod? Who knew?
The ‘other side’ of "policy is important" is "no it isn’t, so let’s talk about sports or something."
And as you know, the Villagers hate having to sully their spotless minds with policy details. So giving time to the ‘other side’ is very important to them.
TenguPhule
Viewa from the Party of Anthrax and Tirerims.
Liberal Media my Ass.
woody
That is just goddamn stunning
Why are you shocked and stunned?
the press has not functioned i n the public interest since the age of consolidation began back in the ’80s.
the corporat press is the wholly-owned subsidiary of the CorpoRat interests which own both ‘parties’ and all three branches of Govt.
In the Corporate State, the corporate media are the State Media…
duh
ChrisS
There’s a lot of interest in that story …
The A-Rod story is interesting to people because there are a lot of articles written about the A-Rod story by journalists employed by the media corporations and media personalities employed by the media corporations on TV shows are talking about the A-Rod story, so there must be a lot of public interest in the A-Rod story.
Sure, makes sense to me.
As much as his answer about the constituent calls. Can we at least get a look at the call-logs? No? Shit. Ok, we believe you.
How about that A-Rod guy?
Dave
I look forward to his endorsement of teaching the Flat Earth theory in science classes.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Napoleon
It tells me that he must be using some kinda weird internal calculator where a Rush Republican is twice as American as everybody else. So he has to count them twice.
Max B.
wow, that’s his whole fucking answer. mahzel tov, bob, you’re a douchebag.
seriously, one sentence? why do these q & a’s if they’re not going to even respect the questioners enough to give serious, thoughtful answers?
Legalize
Wait, is A-Rod the "other side" to important international issues. What "other side"? Can A-Rod cure these issues or is he the cause of these issues. As a Yankees fan, I understand that he can take these issues to the opposite field with one hand tied behind his back, but I don’t see any other relationship.
JL
Phew… The A-Rod story proves that journalists can report on a subject with out the input of the repubs.
IncandenzaH
Btw, the execrable "media critic" Howie Kurtz will be online on the WaPo chat today at 2pm.
Got any questions for him?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/02/10/DI2009021000697.html
Krista
Somewhere, Nate Silver is heard banging his head repeatedly against a wall…
Nikki
And CNN is now saying that robocalls are pressuring GOP senators to vote against the stimulus.
bootlegger
@Nikki: Rush says its 100:1 against, and that is GOSPEL baby!
JL
OT Is anyone watching Obama on TV? There was a lady who asked how long it would take for help to reach her. She can’t live in the parks two more years with her family. He walked into the audience and gave her a hug and said that his staff would speak with her after the town hall.
ChrisS
@41
Kinda, Tom Hicks is supposedly very disappointed in A-Rod for cheating.
"I’d rather he had one further apology," Hicks said. "That would be to the owner of the Texas Rangers, who signed him to that contract. Then, I’ll decide whether I want to accept his apology."
The very same Tom Hicks whose best friend is George Bush.
Cyrus
@Lola:
Why spare her? I’m a journalist, and I hate myself.
(Kidding, of course. I haven’t been a journalist since July.)
More seriously, there’s a lot of good journalism out there; it’s just not coming from the NYT, the WaPo (of which Newsweek is a subsidiary), or TV news. Call the rot in the first two insider-itis, and it seems like TV news has been vapid all my life. But Seymour Hersh has been muckraking from Watergate to Abu Ghraib, the Boston Globe and other papers published a lot about signing statements and the U.S. Attorney firings, McCain had his defenders during the campaign but he got plenty of criticism too…
The point is, yes, we need to fix the insider media or pay attention to them very selectively, and it sucks that those particular ones would be so corrupted. But American journalism isn’t totally useless yet.
JGabriel
Robert, "amount of people talking" is itself a neutral measure, neither good nor bad without the context of what they are saying.
For instance, while you seem to take "people talking" as a positive measure, it’s really not a good thing when most people are saying, "My God, what a fucking idiot," or "Jesus H. Christ on fucking candletstick, our media fucking sucks!"
.
bootlegger
@Napoleon: It tells you they don’t have a liberal bias or a conservative bias, they have a financial bias. Whatever whips the crowd into a frenzy is also what sells papers/ad time, so crazed phone calls are the better metric for them.
Zifnab
@Nikki: /facedesk
We’re all doomed.
Is this current events or the backstory to the next Terminator Movie? "Huh, just got another call from some guy named ‘Skynet’ telling how to vote."
bootlegger
@JL: Anyone have a link to this?
JL
@bootlegger: Live appearance on MSNBC. It just finished.
gopher2b
@JL:
What are the parks? Like the an actual park?
Did anyone catch Geitner’s speech. I think I’m the only one on the planet that thinks its a good plan (although I wish they had finalized more details before the released it…the last thing everyone needs is more uncertainty)
Rick Taylor
Trying to make sense of it all, I listened to this interview of Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb by CNBC. Especially towards the latter part they tried to address what needed to be done, but the questioning was a absolutely insane; calling them names (Mr. Black Swan) and asking for tips on how to invest as they tried to raise above the din and say something substantive. it’s not so hard to see how we got where we are.
Peter J
Maybe the reporter is so vapid that he has failed to notice that there’s a new president? That the one who used to own part of the Rangers left office last month, the one whose career high point really should have been baseball commisioner and not president?
jake 4 that 1
Leaving aside how much papers should rely on the readership of kids, by this logic, all articles should include something that will get the attention of kids. Therefore a reporter who asks the president what he thinks of the Jonas Brothers is a genius and not, as you might suspect, a blithering moron.
Robert Barnes: Fair & Balanced or Fairly Unbalanced?
timb
@Steeplejack: I have started in the last couple of years (because both my senators are called moderates), but I don’t like it.
The Other Steve
I bought Taleb’s Black Swan book, but have not read it yet. Got through the first chapter or so, and it is interesting. Not sure it has answers, just makes you think.
jibeaux
I think it’s sort of the law of complaints, which might have a name. People are a lot more likely to call to raise hell about something than they are to praise it or to say they consider it reasonable. You saw this all the time with immigration; if you were an alien trying to judge public opinion on the basis of calls to congresscritters, you would have expected to see torch-wielding peasants storming every tienda and taqueria in town…
Zam
Man I feel sorry for some of you guys with the reps you have. I live in Wisconsin where I have two dem senators (one being Feingold) and my congressman is a dem as well. Last night I filled out a question from my rep Ron Kind on the stimulus plan, he sends these to constituents from time to time, asking what I thought the stimulus was lacking. He then had a list to choose from on what I thought would be the best thing for congress to focus on next. I’m just really glad I have people representing me that agree with the majority of my concerns.
The Moar You Know
And so dies America, looking for an "other side" that is nothing more than stupidity.
Zifnab
@Zam: Yeah, just rub it in why don’t you?
ricky
Not to take the position of the WaPo, but I disagree with your premise. I would not equate cable tv with media elites.
Pond scum pontificators. The original inspiration for the "I’m With" T-shirts. Something of that order. Elite?
Not so much.
fredrick of hollywood
Barnes is right about the constituent calls. Rush Limbaugh has mobilized his wingnut army, and they are flooding Congress with calls about the stimulus. We can dismiss it as an orchestrated effort by a bunch of dimwits, but hey, it’s a democracy and the other side is doing their best to make themselves heard, and is succeeding at having an impact far greater than their actual numbers deserve. They are far, far better at that than we are.
El Cid
What’s funny about this is that Barnes’ statement is both literally true and utterly meaningless.
He has simply managed to state, without insight, that unrepresentative samples are different than representative samples.
It’s almost like saying "Hey, these poll companies pay all this money to randomly call all around the country to get opinions, but I bet they’d hear something different if they went to the Republican Party headquarters and asked them !!! Haw haw!!!"
Maus
@Lola: "My sister is a journalist, but I hate the rest of them."
I think the problem here is people who aren’t anything close to journalists are calling themselves that and being employed as such without any qualifications or standards.
Jen R
From the Howard Kurtz chat:
Clearly, the answer is to get people in danger of losing their jobs and healthcare to hang out with Madonna.
Also, people who have been tortured.
Excuse me while I go kill myself.
Wile E. Quixote
Why do people send e-mails to their congresscritters? It’s just going to get tossed as spam or get a boilerplate reply. Assuming that you’ve written something that’s coherent and cogent and not just some BOB rant about building ginormous (amazingly enough my spell checker did not flag that, but did flag "congresscritters") brick ovens to burn shale oil so we can electrify the railroads and put billions of people back to work and all have tasty pizza (did I miss anything there?) why not print the goddamned thing out, put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and mail it to them? You’ll get more attention that way and it’s not that much more effort than just pressing send and then getting pissed off when you’re ignored.
Jen R
Wile E. Quixote: E-mail is immediate, letters aren’t. But I agree with you that hard copies are more likely to be taken seriously than emails. That’s why I like to send faxes.
norbizness
My theory about Howard Kurtz actually being a hand puppet operated by a four-year-old who just consumed a whole quart of coffee ice cream draws ever closer to confirmation.
Notorious P.A.T.
Man, isn’t that the truth. Thanks to the wonderful Bush Era jobs market, I was forced to take my college degree and work as a cashier at a big-box retail store for 3 years. People are vastly more likely to complain than they are to praise. But here’s the thing: If I check out 200 people in a shift, and one of them complains about me, does that mean I’m doing a bad job?
flounder
If it is any consolation, Howard Kurtz just told me that he never claimed that Tucker Carlson was "banished", even though it is documented on his 1/5/09 chat.
On a related note, I had mentioned I was going to start documenting questions I asked because the ones that aren’t answered often say as much as the ones that are. brokenwindowvillage.blogspot.com
DougJ
@flounder
Thanks. I like the questions from your blog. Good work on Howie and the banishment story.
bartkid
>Rule by Rush
I look forward to serving our glorious Canadian Rock Overlords!
I can live with being able to pay for goods and services with copies of Fly by Night or 2112, though the new denomination, Snakes & Arrows may lead to some inadvertent fatalities.
Steeplejack
@timb:
I was late at work, so this thread is probably dead by now.
But I did remember a couple of occasions when I sent a letter to a rep or senator. And of course all I got back a was boilerplate response saying something like "Senator Snort values your opinion and will continue to work for all the people of the great state of [undisclosed location redacted]."
Actually, that was one time. The other time I got absolutely no response at all. Democracy in action.
brantl
Yeah, dumbfucks need something to watch on news shows, too!