question: Why is the media allowed to purposely mislead people? Not by purposely lying, but, for example: Polling 1,000 - 2,000 people, writing an article and publishing it based on those results, saying things like "majority", etc?
comment: Your example is not misleading at all. A poll of 1000-2000 people, randomly selected from around the country, is actually a pretty accurate way to estimate overall public opinion.
passages: Bias has also been claimed in instances referred to as conflict of interest, whereby the owners of media outlets have vested interests in other commercial enterprises or political parties. In such cases in the United States, the media outlet is required to disclose the conflict of interest.
   Section::::Controversies.:Vincent Foster conspiracy theory.
   Ruddy operates a conservative news website, NewsMax, and, as of 2004, continued to assert that there was a conspiracy and faulted the media.
  
  Section::::Controversies.:United Nations.
   After the Guardian's April correction—published after the paper ran a caption on a photo showing passengers on a train observing a two-minute silence for Holocaust Remembrance Day—Honest Reporting filed a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission.
   According to journalist Laurie Oakes, Savva said in 2011 that journalists can lie, but politicians shouldn't: "As a journalist I lied often, usually about my sources, but about other things, too. Journalists can and do get away with lying; politicians and staff can't. Nor should they."
   Journalist Seth Shulman, at the Union of Concerned Scientists, welcomed the judge's statement that accusations of fraud "go to the heart of scientific integrity. They can be proven true or false. If false, they are defamatory. If made with actual malice, they are actionable."
   Section::::Research methodology.
  
  The book is based on a survey, completed in 1980, of 238 journalists randomly selected from America's most influential news organizations: ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, "Time", "Newsweek", "U.S. News & World Report", the "New York Times", the "Washington Post", and the "Wall Street Journal". Content analysis and audience reception studies were used to determine if deviations between the views held by journalists and those held by the general public had any effect on the way the news gets reported and the resulting beliefs held by the public.
   Rick Shenkman also analyzes the media's impact on politics in his book, "Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter", and observes that although American voters have gained significant political power over the last 50 years, their knowledge of politics and world affairs have decreased, which makes them more vulnerable to manipulation, and claims that "politicians have repeatedly misled voters" by "dumbing down of American politics via marketing, spin machines, and misinformation."
   The court noted that reporters can be compelled to reveal their sources because New Hampshire's newsgathering privilege is a qualified one. The court then vacated the trial court's decision and remanded the case in order to determine whether Mortgage Specialists' interests outweighed disrupting the free flow of information.
  
  Section::::Court findings.:Defamation and anonymous speech.
   BULLET::::- News manipulation. News can manipulate and be manipulated. Governments and corporations may attempt to manipulate news media; governments, for example, by censorship, and corporations by share ownership. The methods of manipulation are subtle and many. Manipulation may be voluntary or involuntary. Those being manipulated may not be aware of this. See: news propaganda.
  
  BULLET::::- Truth. Truth may conflict with many other values.
  
  BULLET::::- Public interest. Revelation of military secrets and other sensitive government information may be contrary to the public interest, even if it is true. However, public interest is not a term which is easy to define.
   However, newspapers have a duty to report and investigate stories related to political corruption. Such investigative journalism is right and proper when it is backed up with documents, interviews with responsible witnesses, and other primary sources. Journalists and editors are often accused of sensationalizing scandals by those whose public image is harmed by the legitimate reporting of the scandal. News organizations are not obliged to (and are often ethically obliged "not" to) avoid stories that might make local, state and national public figures uncomfortable. Occasionally, news organizations mistakenly relay false information from unreliable anonymous sources, who use mass media as a tool for retaliation, defamation, victim and witness tampering, and monetary or personal gain. Therefore, any story based on sources who may be reasonably assumed to be motivated to act in this way is best interpreted with critical thinking.
   According to Andrew Sullivan, "One alleged news network fed its audience a diet of lies, while contributing financially to the party that benefited from those lies."
   BULLET::::- In April 2005, the Federal Communications Commission warned television stations that they could be fined for airing news stories provided by the government and by companies without disclosing who made them.
  
  BULLET::::- In May 2006, FCC chairman Kevin Martin ordered a review of airing of VNRs by television stations, following the April 2006 report by the Center for Media and Democracy.
   MMfA vice-president Ari Rabin-Havt said "C. Boyden Gray is [a] Koch-affiliated, former Fox News contributor whose flights of fancy have already been discredited by actual experts in tax law." Gray denied having been on Fox's payroll while he was a Fox consultant in 2005, but at that time, Fox had said Gray was a contributor, adding: "We pay contributors for strong opinions."
   The editors and journalists of the Associated Press (AP) wire service fail to serve the public interest in the same way as employees of the individual papers. Controlled by 41 large newspaper corporations, the AP acts in their interests.
  
  Sinclair quotes a letter from the editor of the weekly "San Francisco Star", James H. Barry:
   Section::::Criticism.:Funding.
   With the behaviour of news media organisations at the centre of the scandal, questions were raised as to whether media coverage was stifled by ownership interests. Initial reaction by the Wall Street Journal, owned by News Corp, was to serve as a platform for owner Rupert Murdoch's response. A commentator at Fox, also owned by News Corp, said "I'm not going to touch it." Other industry commentators noted that the amount, aggressiveness, and focus of early media coverage of the scandal by news organisations varied widely, possibly reflecting the tension between journalistic integrity and the vested interests of the ultimate owners of those organisations.
   BULLET::::- Hazen, Don and Julie Winokur, (eds). (1997) We the Media: A Citizens’ Guide to Fighting for Media Democracy. New York: The New Press.
  
  BULLET::::- Lewis, Jeff (2005) Language Wars: The Role of Media and Culture in Global Terror and Political Violence, London: University of Michigan Press/ Pluto Books, 2005.
  
  BULLET::::- McChesney, Robert, "Making Media Democratic", Boston Review, Summer 1998
  
  BULLET::::- McChesney, Robert Waterman. (2000). Rich media, poor democracy: Communication politics in dubious times. New York: New Press.
   Some aspects of the methodology have been challenged, and the authors debated their critics in academic journals. Alleged problems with the methodology included: a low sample size; poor randomization; the failure to include media owners, managers, or editors in the samples; the inadequate use of proper polling techniques; the use of biased questions; point of view assertions by the studies authors that arbitrarily qualified some things as conservative or liberal; the failure to adequately measure the general public's attitudes; and poor statistical analysis of the results.
  
  Section::::Findings.
   BULLET::::9. The tone of the article. A newspaper can raise queries or call for an investigation. It need not adopt allegations as statements of fact.
  
  BULLET::::10. The circumstances of the publication, including the timing.
   HIMA! youth initiative, understanding the power of media, started an extensive campaign with a goal to raise the level of critique of broadcast media among the public and boost the number of newspaper readers, since newspapers are, on the whole, out of reach of authorities’ control and regulation.
  
  Section::::HIMA!’s Tactics of Non-Violent Struggle.
   "“Self-regulation, at least in the ethical fantasyland of News Corp, is only a worthwhile system of media accountability so long as it doesn’t inquire into the abuse of a newspaper’s power to pursue vendettas and parade its own paranoia…. More importantly, this whole unpleasant episode demonstrates the hypocrisies that underpin the media self-regulation construct in Australia. In response to the perceived threats of the Finkelstein Inquiry and the Convergence Review, newspaper proprietors rushed to ‘strengthen’ the Press Council’s authority and increase its funding."
   Section::::Reception.
  
  As noted in The Conversation: "Media owners have always, in response to inquiry recommendations, run campaigns against any suggestion that their right to carry out their business as and how they see fit should be tampered with." The review sparked strong reactions from media entities.
   The public relations counsel must therefore generate news, "no matter what the medium which broadcasts this news."
  
  The public relations counsel must lift startling facts from his whole subject and present them as news. He must isolate ideas and develop them into events so that they can be more readily understood and so that they may claim attention as news.
  
  Once interesting news is created it will propagate itself through media channels which already seek to capture public attention. (p. 171)
  
  Section::::Synopsis.:Part IV—Ethical Relations.
   Section::::Corporate bias and power bias.
  
  Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their 1988 book "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" proposed a propaganda model to explain systematic biases of U.S. media as a consequence of the pressure to create a stable and profitable business. In this view, corporate interests create five filters that bias news in their favor.
  
  Section::::Corporate bias and power bias.:Pro-power and pro-government bias.
  
presuppositions: Polling 1,000 people is a small sample size. The media purposely misleads people by polling only 1,000-2,000 people.
corrections: Polling 1,000 people is a good sample size and representative of a demographic. The media isn't misleading people by polling 1,000-2,000 people.
raw_presuppositions: Polling 1,000 people is a small sample size. The media purposely misleads people by polling only 1,000-2,000 people.
raw_corrections: Polling 1,000 people is a good sample size and representative of a demographic. The media isn't misleading people by polling 1,000-2,000 people.