Fox news exec to staff: Online polls ‘not true measures of public opinion’

Fox News’s vice president of public-opinion research sent a memo to staff reminding employees that unscientific online polls, which were cited in several segments to suggest that Donald Trump won Sept 26’s presidential debate against Hillary Clinton, do not meet the network’s editorial standards.

"As most of the publications themselves clearly state, the sample obviously can’t be representative of the electorate because they only reflect the views of those Internet users who have chosen to participate," Dana Blanton, Fox News’s vice president of public-opinion research, wrote in the memo to the channel's politics team. "Another problem — we know some campaigns/groups of supporters encourage people to vote in online polls and flood the results," she wrote. "These quickie click items do not meet our editorial standards." "News networks and other organizations go to great effort and rigor to conduct scientific polls — for good reason," Blanton added in the memo. "They know quick vote items posted on the web are nonsense, not true measures of public opinion."