Posted 3:02 PM by Scoobie Davis

Fox News and Opinion Dynamics Violated Ethical Standards With Health Care Reform Poll
Last night Rachel Maddow addressed some leading questions that Fox News used in a poll of respondents prior to asking their opinion of health care reform. Maddow referenced Nate Silver's article on how the poll used loaded questions to skew the findings, e.g., "Do you think President Obama apologizes too much to the rest of the world for past U.S. policies?" and "Do you think Barack Obama's travel and speaking schedule makes him look more like he is a candidate on the campaign trail or more like he is the president of the United States?"

What I found incredible is that Joe Trippi appeared on the show and balked at denouncing the clearly biased polling. Not only was the poll flawed but it clearly violates the American Association for Public Opinion Research's Code of Professional Ethics & Practice for, among other things, "knowingly select[ing] research tools and methods of analysis that yield misleading conclusions" and for not exercising "due care in developing research designs and survey instruments, and in collecting, processing, and analyzing data, taking all reasonable steps to assure the reliability and validity of results."