***It just so happens that this week, my Internet & Politics is requiring us to provide a media critique for a campus news outlet.Finally, the SA elections are over and I can say what I actually think about WRGW's coverage of the whole thing. I'll be upfront and say that I was working on Xochitl Sanchez's campaign for the presidential race, but I think my analysis of their coverage is fairly logical and accurate. And that's more than I can say for their coverage of Xochitl's candidacy.
This first time WRGW revealed its bias in the presidential race was on Febuary 10th. And I guess if I'm being really honest, when I say WRGW, I really mean Assistant "News" Editor Dan Keylin. His opening blog about her candidacy stated that "at this point of the announcement process Lifton is the overwhelming favorite." Says who, Daniel? Do you have a poll to back that up? Because I didn't see one.
Dan Keylin will go on to make more statements like that for the next two weeks. More often than not, he has no substantial evidence to back up his claims. He also felt the need to add this disclaimer to the blog post I mentioned above:
"Interestingly, when I tried to join the group I was rejected, a little unexpected for an SA presidential candidate trying to gain some support early in the campaign."Who the hell cares? That's not news, that's your egotistical commentary.
Ten days later on February 20th, Dan was at it again. I'll give him some credit though, his breakdown of Xochitl's debate performance that night was fairly accurate. But, he was sure to get his plug for Jason Lifton, calling Jason's debate performance "very, very strong."
I realize that the disclaimer at the top of this post said these were solely the views of the author. However, you can't be both an opinionated blogger and be seen as an objective "assistant news editor" at the same time. Pick one.
I'm going to keep going with the examples, because quite frankly WRGW News just really pissed me off this month. February 23rd, WRGW News posted its endorsement for Jason Lifton for President on its blog. Shocker. The endorsement points out that "Jason will be able to hit the ground running on these policy matters from day one." Didn't Hillary Clinton already use that line?
To be fair, she also received some positive/neutral coverage from WRGW on the 23rd. But the post that talked about Xochitl's advantage with the freshmen vote wasn't posted by Dan, it was posted by Alexa Vogel.
And I've saved the best for last! I couldn't help but laugh when I read the results of the polls that were conducted by WRGW. WRGW released a straw poll from their debate, which I conveniently can no longer find on their Web site. From that poll, Dan speculated that Xochitl would be getting a larger number of PIKE and Phi Psi votes based on the results of the straw poll.
First of all, the poll was conducted with 50 participants. Anyone that knows anything about polling, would tell you that you need at least 100 participants in a perfectly weighed poll to be even close to accurate. Second, there was only one Phi Psi in the room that night and he didn't vote!!! Where Dan Keylin got that "analysis" from I'll never know. It certainly didn't come from the poll.
The second poll, was of 369 voters for the Presidential race. But, the poll states that results only reflected likely and very likely voters (aka 58% of 369, or 214 people). They don't have any numbers as to how many of those were freshmen, sophomores, juniors, or seniors and don't include graduated students. Now the poll again acknowledges that is not scientific, but it's so unscientific that why even publish it?
My last example comes from Dan's most recent post, today. He called the results of the election, a "surprising nail-biter." By who's standards was that surprising? Based on his poorly conducted poll, I guess I can see his point though.
