Saturday, June 07, 2014

Northern Gateway 'Poll'....Why The (NoLonger) Giant '98 Keeps Shrinking.

TurningCodswallopIntoBlackGold
NotTexasTeaVille


We'll start with the money shot from CKNW and work backwards:


Now....

Where did that actually come from?

Well, our friend Merv Adey asked a 'producer' at CKNW for a citation after she first tweeted it up on her 'personal' feed.

Here is said producer's response:



So, where does the CKNW producer's link take you, exactly?

Why, straight to a post from that infamous oil business-backing 'turf shop called British Columbians For Prosperity:



But.

Here's the (real, actual) thing, from Bloomberg News, who commissioned Nanos to do the (real) poll:

A majority of British Columbians want Prime Minister Stephen Harper to reject or delay Enbridge Inc. (ENB)’s Northern Gateway pipeline amid concern the project could lead to oil spills, a Bloomberg-Nanos poll shows.

Thirty-four percent of respondents want the Canadian government to block the C$6.5 billion ($6 billion) project, which would ship crude from Alberta’s oil sands to the B.C. coast for export to Asia, and 33 percent want it delayed for further review. Twenty-nine percent say they want it approved, according to the poll...



So...

Do you see what the fine folks from 'BC4Prosperity' did there?

Specifically do you see how they turned '33 percent want it delayed for further review'  into '33% are open to the project but think it needs a bit more review'.

And with that wee bit of flim-flammery complete they used a little of the old flyin' Phil shake-a-puddin'-type juju  to come up with the following equation:

 29 + 33 = 62%.

Which equals two-thirds in favour of the pipeline.

When, of course, it is really less than one-third.

All of which is pretty bad, but pretty much par for the course from this bunch.

So....

Why do they even bother?

Because, 7 times out of 10, they are pretty sure they can get some overworked and/or lazy, non-fact checking member of the proMedia herd to buy it.

Which is exactly what the stenographers at CKNW did when they swallowed the codswallop whole and turned it into 'news' on Saturday afternoon?

Small potatoes, I know.

But this is only the first step for the propaganda mongers.

Because, now that things have been set in motion, they will wait and hope that the other shoe drops.

Specifically, now that it has been officially 'sanctioned' by a 'major' news outlet  they will do their best to have it turn up somewhere like, say, in one of Mikey Mike's next columns or seven.

And then the propmongers will really start to crank the wurlitzer when they pull out the results of their very own push poll that they already have tucked away in their back pocket.

Or, at the very least, in the back of their collective amygdala.

Which is the real story here that you will never read in the public prints.


****

Gosh.

I wonder who told the NW 'producer' about the 'story'  in the first place?


Could it, perhaps have been one of Mr. Sean Leslie's guests on his Saturday afternoon radioshow I wonder  (see, for example, tweets, above)


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Why do we wonder about the 'source' that led to the 'swallowing'?....Because, well.....This.
A link to Nanos' actual poll summary is....Here.

_____
Saturday evening update...It actually gets 'worse' for CKNW if that's possible....Here.


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14 comments:

Marionetta said...


When I was listening to the former top dawg,I wondered what they were up to; having already seen the REAL poll results.

I wonder if BCers For Prosperity have anything to do with Americans for Prosperity, the Koch funded lobby group.

Naw, couldn't be. Right?

RossK said...

marionetta--

Naw, indeed.

(and even if not 'naw', tracks prolly covered pretty darned good, regardless)

.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget importing the condensate upstreamto lubricate the pipeline as the asphalt goes downstream to the coast .aka dilbit aka bitumen.

RossK said...

Thanks Anon.

This story has been updated thanks to the twittmongering by the on-air 'talent'.

...Here

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Norm Farrell said...

BC Astroturfers for Prosperity did some other polling. They rang my house but, upon our selection of the digit indicating opposition to Northern Gateway, the response was a disconnect. Do that enough times and the results can shaped however you wish.

Polls, even when honestly conducted by legitimate polling companies, are subject to error. When they are conducted by imaginary and dishonest organizations, they're entirely suspect.

thwap said...

Good catch! Shared on facebook.

West End Bob said...

Nice work and nice tweets in your Saturday evening update, RossK . . . .

West End Bob said...

Forgot to ask: R U still "ear"-cotting the home of The Watercarrier? Looks like they've totally become the foxNoise of metro Vancouver. No surprise there . . . .

RossK said...

Thanks Norm--

Yes, am well aware that the prop-mongers have already done their 'own' polling....That's the thing I was referring to as already being in their 'back pocket' ready to whip out as soon as they start to crank the wurlitzer for real.

______

Thanks thwap--

This really is a page right out of another so-called citizens' group for prosperity's playbook.

______

Bob--

Still on the 'cott.

This only came to my attention because of Merv Adey's diligence of getting the producer on record.

After that I worked forward and backward.

Took about five minutes so, really, the 'producer' and the on-air 'talent' really have no excuse.


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Anonymous said...

Wagging the dog ,BC style ,without checking for rabies first.?

RossK said...

Anon-Above--

The thing is, on-air talent in this case knows who he is dealing with here.

Which begs the question...Was somebody wagging the dog while knowing, a priori, that there wasn't any rabies (or even the mildest distemper) to be found?

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kootcoot said...

These folks math reminds me of the math whiz of the East and his 1,000,000 jobs, which really is a desparate exercise in magical thinking and getting actual jobs and man years confuse. If TimmyBit wins and a guy stays at the same job (if he was able to find one) for 8 years under Timmy (shudder) he counts as 8 new jobs somehow....................

scotty on denman said...

You can always be duped into believing a lie, but if the liar persists with the same lie after you proclaim disbelief, even after providing any number of refutations of the lie, then the liar is really saying you'd better be persuaded anyway or else something bad will happen to you. 'The Big Lie', or its offspring, the 'whopper' (the 'Big Lie' that isn't just repeated, but inflated with each telling) is really a dare, a purposely nonsensical response that threatens to break your arm if you dare persist in refuting it---or, in the perversion of the rule of law as conceived by the BC Liberals, a provocation to do or counter-threaten to do something punishable by law, even if ethically justifiable.
You know, the standard Franz Kafka plot-line.

I view it as a sign of desperate tactics rather than shrewd strategy to relentlessly proceed along pathways that agitate not just the electorate in the realm of popular politics but provoke the courts in the sphere of Constitutional law. Christy, for example, risks contempt of court by continuing to play politics with what is essentially a legal matter regarding teachers' contracts. The last election showed people are relatively uncaring about honesty in their politicians, but it's a completely different and absolute matter in a court of law, as the $2 million fine for bargaining in bad faith warned Christy's crew.

Proponents of Northern Gateway also continue to play a political game as if it will somehow influence the real game in court which concerns itself only with legality, not popularity. Nevertheless, proponents spout and whopperize the 'Big Lie' (that a majority approves of the pipeline) firstly because the project's in big trouble but, more importantly, because the matter has yet to face its first of probably many legal baptisms of fire. We in BC know those polling numbers are bogus, but do other Canadians? For Harper's upcoming campaign it matters but the litigants now sharpening their cases know it's not a popularity contest, it'll be a starkly legal one as soon as the first injunction against the pipeline is sought. Harper has to make the most political hay he can with Northern Gateway, big lies, whoppers and all, before the opening legal salvos cut him off. The political usefulness of this issue might be the strongest argument for him to delay inevitable Constitutional challenges by delaying his "final decision" on the pipeline. After all, it's a dead letter in BC, the continued pursuit of which will probably cost him votes in critical ridings that were extremely close last time---not to mention the fact that he wants to collect votes from the rest of Canada which is immanently more susceptible to bullshit, out-of-province polling numbers than we are here in BC. Again, I view these tactics as a sign of desperation over blowing a huge political investment.

Anonymous said...

Non sequitur
Meanwhile most Canadian banks offering negative interest rate accounts hidden as surcharge accounts.

http://bastiat.mises.org/2014/06/negative-interest-rates-only-the-start/