Newsbusters' Gladnick doesn't understand polling

You know those silly online “polls” that are completely unscientific and that you can take as often as you want, further skewing the results? The ones that everyone who knows anything about politics, media, or polling understands to be worthless as anything but an attempt to boost web traffic?

Newsbusters' P.J. Gladnick thinks the result of such a poll should be front-page news:

LA Times Downplays Overwhelming Result of Own Online Poll on Arizona Boycott

By P.J. Gladnick (Bio | Archive)

Fri, 05/14/2010 - 09:35 ET

If a Los Angeles Times poll showed overwhelming support for the boycott, do you not think this would be front page news? Well, the results were overwhelming...97.6% of the respondents to this L.A. Times poll were opposed to the boycott of Arizona. The poll question: “Was the L.A. City Council right to pass a boycott of Arizona?”

So an astonishing 97.6% percent of those who participated in this poll are opposed to the boycott. Is this not big news? Not for the L.A. Times since the only place you can find the results is at the page that pops up after you vote.

Notice that Gladnick never gives any indication that he understands that the “poll” is totally unscientific?

Oh, Gladnick also seems to think this obviously fake photograph of a cactus ostensibly raising its middle finger at California is real:

The cactus in the photo at right planted along the Arizona border with California gives a pretty good indication of the reaction of that state to the boycott directed at them by the Los Angeles city council over the new immigration law.

Meanwhile one wonders how many more similar cacti will be planted along the state line in Arizona facing California

Sadly, that's typical of the relentlessly stupid media criticism that comes from Newsbusters.