Polls News Media Incest

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Look before you leap. The Zulu language puts it differently. U-bo gawula u-bheke. Remember, -u- is pronounced as in uber. The proverb means look up when cutting a dead branch. It might fall on top of you.

I did just that. Look before you leap, because I nearly accused reporters and TV news directors of being lazy and relying on polls to generate breaking stories. Then I realized that polls themselves study breaking news then craft questions based on those stories. Fine. I think nobody is lazy. They just have an incestuous relationship.

I don’t like polls. My political analysis is never based on polls because I have a little brain, although it doesn’t function most of the time. It’s wrong that polls determine the fate of a presidential candidate, of a political party. Equally, television and online outlets are wrong to base breaking news on polls, when real human beings are there in the subway, grocery store, school gates, pavements, drugstores, bus stops, churches and factory outlets.

This incest results in the same current affairs analysis and the same ‘experts’ being interviewed on TV. It becomes predictable and the public switches off. The polls-mainstream media relationship becomes dictatorial. It weans off issues that are important to millions of ordinary Americans. Insulin for example, which is an important component of Biden’s deliverables. I looked it up, but I don’t know what it is and how Democrats tend to bring relief to those affected.

Therefore, I was disappointed when U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris tried to talk about it, and the CNN reporter interviewing her cut her off. Jasmine Crockett the Democrat from Texas, also talks about insulin when discussing where President Joe Biden is and how he is going about catering to the needs of ordinary Americans.

Insulin is a health issue. It might not be in a poll questionnaire but voters need to know about it before November 2024. The incestuous polls-news media relationship plays into the hands of the Republican Party. It wants the focus to be on immigration and the Texas border, and not what Taylor Swift fans and American football fans regard as a priority in their simple lives.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

Executive Blogger

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