The Post Is Confusing The Public

Some of us being more easily confused than others, naturally.

I've  been  blogging  about how the Post reported on results of a poll it conducted jointly with ABC News, and I've not consulted ABC to learn how they portrayed it. But the Post's mistake is to provide two completely different impressions of the same data. Here's one, here's the other.

To recap, Richard Morin filed an online story yesterday morning that presented an almost uniformly negative public opinion of President Bush and Iraq. For most of the day, that story was available on the Post's homepage.

Then a new story emerged--the public wasn't devoid of all support for Bush and Iraq--more than half the public said American forces should remain in Iraq until civil order is restored, and that Iraqis are better off thanks to the war, and that the war has contributed to long-term stability in the Middle East, and are optimistic about the next 12 months.

The new story was written by Morin, Dan Balz and assistant polling director Claudia Deane. One could have easily thought it was based on a different poll, but instead it was based on reporting the essential truth of the same poll: The public is divided on Iraq, with many negatives and important positives for President Bush.

As explained in his detailed response,  Morin says this is the result of an experiment: the Post is teasing the Post/ABC News polls--"We at the Post are not yet sure if it is worth it"--by writing about a small sample of questions that won't destroy the value of the main story to come. They're trying to promote the website by talking about a story that will appear in the paper, without destroying the unique value of either product.

Unfortunately, the questions for the teaser story focused on reaction to V.P. Dick Cheney's comments about  terrorists being in their "last throes" and Secretary of State Rice's comments about defeating the enemy in Iraq as a "death knell" for terrorism.

"It was a coincidence all the news was bad,"  said a friend of mine.

I've worked in news organizations with print and electronic products, trying to figure out how those two pieces should fit together. Good luck.

In the meantime, don't mislead us. If the poll says the public has mixed views about Bush and Iraq, don't leave us with the impression that most people think everything is going to hell in a handbasket. Not even in a story that you leave on your homepage all day long.

I wonder how many hits the homepage of washingtonpost.com gets compared to hard-copy deliveries. Hey, I've got another question for that live chat... They answered three, bub, don't push it.