Topic: CNSNews.com
Both WorldNetDaily and CNSNews.com devoted articles uncritically advancing a Zogby-Judicial Watch poll claiming that a majority of Americans believe there will be "high levels of corruption in the White House" if Hillary Clinton is elected president in 2008. But neither article noted Judicial Watch's history of anti-Clinton activism or the poll's slanted, leading questions.
Judicial Watch is, of course, the Richard Mellon Scaife-funded conservative legal group that filed dozens of lawsuits against the Clinton administration during the 1990s. As we've noted, Scaife has given much more money to Judicial Watch than George Soros has to liberal-leaning legal group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
Further, given that Judicial Watch paid for the Zogby poll, the poll's questions are tailored to give answers that Judicial Watch wants to hear (and promote). As the Washington Post's Dana Milbank pointed out:
The poll [Judicial Watch leader Tom] Fitton commissioned, actually five questions added to a nationwide poll by Zogby International, was rather loaded in its language. "Some people believe that the Bill Clinton administration was corrupt," one question begins. In another question about Hillary Clinton, every answer included the word "corrupt," and the question was not asked about other candidates so that a comparison could be made.
Indeed, here's the first question:
Some people believe that the Bill Clinton administration was corrupt. Whether or not you believe the Clinton administration was corrupt, how concerned are you that there will be high levels of corruption in the White House if Hillary Clinton is elected President in 2008?
Isn't forwarding slanted polls as representative of reality a form of corruption? What say you, Judicial Watch?
