This morning, Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper has deigned to grace us with a mayoral election poll. It’s almost not important what it reveals (though it is interesting that The Trinity Cheerleader has almost made up a seven-point deficit and added 25 points to his total). What is fascinating is why we got one, especially since The News did not do a poll for the first round of the election.
I’m now at the point where I firmly believe that save for the most mundane of stories, The News has an agenda about what it covers, how it is going to cover it, and when it runs the stories. This is unusual for me, because I am about the last person in the world to give in to conspiracy theories. But The News’ behavior since its second round of layoffs last year has convinced me otherwise.
Case in point (and I’m going to exclude its abysmal Trinity coverage, to show my impartiality): The number of important stories that run on Saturday, the least read paper of the week. This has been going on for at least a year, but it really came to the forefront last Saturday, when The News ran a major expose of police corruption. The story noted that the paper had been working on the piece since March, so this wasn’t a hurry up and get it in sort of thing. So why run it on Saturday? So no one will read it. This satisfies the reporters (and it was a well-reported effort), who can’t complain they are being censored, and pleases the bosses, who know no one will read it and who can’t be criticized for censoring their reporters.
Which brings us to the poll. Why now? Well, it is news. But I also think the paper is trying to exert a little authority, remind everyone in the elite that it is still a player despite its financial woes and its loss of readership. Is the race a dead heat? Who knows? How accurate can any poll be when turnout is going to be so low — just five or six percent of registered voters? But I can guarantee that everyone in the elite is running around this morning with their dresses over the head parsing the numbers and talking about The News.
And, finally, why run the poll on the day early voting ends?
