Polling

Poll results do not impress me at all. There are just too many "holes" in the game to make it credible. How many times have you been called and realized you were talking to pollsters and, therefore,  hung up immediately. I do the same mostly because the so-called pollster isn't one. Too often, they are a telephone salesperson whose lead line lies that they are polling when they are not. It's simply another dishonest sales pitch designed to frustrate your day and there is no point in wasting their time or yours in furthering the talk any longer. I hasten to say that it is true, some sales folk make their meagre livings this way and should not be abused on line. At the same time, my time feels as valuable as theirs and I don't want to be dragged away from my book or writing or anything by a ring on my phone. Even though I am member of the no-call set, it doesn't seem to stop these, to me, nuisance calls. But getting back to the real pollsters, it's a subject that bothers me. One I heard this morning, purported that a poll said people in B.C. , Canada, had been polled and two-thirds of them  approved of legalizing hard drugs not just marijuana. That polling statistic, is one I simply cannot believe. First of all, I wonder where the pollsters got the stats, second of all, the statement by the radio host, did not give any information on who was polled, the poll's breadth, the poll's location, size or reliability. Hard drugs? Two thirds of British Columbia is a lot of people, and I doubt very much that average persons in all the small towns in the province and those in large cities are going to agree that hard drugs such as heroin, ought to be handed out as needed. Somehow, it doesn't fit how I see two-thirds of the population anywhere, let alone even BC with its reputed rather free-wheeling character. I would have to ask a lot of questions, not about the subject presented, but about the poll itself. Too many media folk leech their information from odd sources, sometimes biased or too restricted, hoping that they find support for their shock-loaded, attention-getting motivated claims. I feel this is bad journalism. If reporters are going to use polls as the basis of what they hope to show credibility toward their piece, they must also make the poll one that is thoroughly credible. They lose credibility if they don't cover their reputations with solid authority. Even then, there are just too many of the silent majority population who will shun the tool of polling as truth. Good journalism is not lazy. It doesn't rely on polls as its only claim to proof. It searches out hard fact. It uses interviews of those who have experience and knowledge in the points they are trying to make. They lay out, when gleaned, the facts which may include as one of its tools, polls, but not using polls solely as truth.