Persistent blunders with exit polls endanger the credibility of mainstream media
Dr. Pranoy Roy was famous as a psephologist across India before he became better known as the suave television anchor and sophisticated media entrepreneur. But for the latter two incarnations, Roy would be a deeply embarrassed man in contemporary times. Every time his news channels NDTV 24x7 and NDTV India touch an opinion and exit poll, the actual election results are so far off the mark that Roy and his merry band of pundits, psephologists and commentators start searching desperately for excuses to justify why their exit polls were worse than many forecasts made by asserted astrologers and tarot card readers. Yes, things have reached such a stage in mainstream media that Bejan Daruwala and Ma Prem Usha have more credibility when it comes to reading the mind of the voters than Roy and the ebullient Dorab Sopariwala. Of course, to be fair to Roy, he and NDTV are not the only culprits when it comes to hopelessly failing to forecast electoral outcomes. Virtually all mainstream TV channels fall into the trap. Says psephologist and political analyst Yashwant Deshmukh whose C-Voter conducted exit polls on behalf of Zee News, “Quite obviously, the exit polls of late have not been able to accurately predict electoral outcomes. Some soul searching is in order.”
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative
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