Posted: 2012 May 17, Thursday 18:28
By George Merlis
An e-mailed poll started with this question: “Do you think the Obama administration was wrong when it refused to grant asylum in the United States to the Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng?”
The question was unanswerable; Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese human rights attorney who had escaped from house arrest and had been smuggled into the embassy by U.S. personnel, had not asked for asylum in the U.S. The question, based on a false premise, was a tipoff that this was a push poll.
Push polls are a fraudulent marketing technique disguised as a poll. A push pollster asks questions designed to plant the seed of an idea. Push polling came to prominence during the GOP presidential primaries in 2000 when callers supporting then Texas Gov. George W. Bush phoned South Carolina Republican voters and, in the guise of conducting a poll, asked them: "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"
McCain and his wife, Cindy, had adopted a dark-skinned Bangladeshi orphan and the child had been photographed on the campaign trail with the Arizona senator. The image of the child combined with the false premise of the poll question had a great impact with South Carolina voters and McCain’s loss of that primary scuttled his chance of winning the 2000 nomination.
(Update: On May 19, Chen boarded a flight to Newark Airport. He was on his way to the U.S. to recuperate and to study; New York University School of Law was prepared to enroll him and a student apartment had been set aside for his and his family's use. Although he was coming to the U.S., it was as a student, not as an asylum-seeking refugee, so weeks after its dissemination, the poll was still based on a false premise.)
The media interview equivalent of push polling is something I call push questioning: a query or a series of queries based on a false premise. The prototype push question is the venerable: “When did you stop beating your wife?” With a push poll you can do what I did when confronted by the Chen Guangcheng question: not answer. You can’t very well not answer a question in an interview. As the late comedian George Carlin said, “No comment IS a comment.” But you can -- and should -- use a push question to get to your interview agenda.
There is a four step process to get from an off-point, hostile or push question to your agenda. Here is the slide that I use to illustrate those four steps in media training workshops:
When a reporter poses a push question, your acknowledgement should be: “The premise of your question is wrong,” or, more bluntly: “The premise of your question is untrue.” (If a reporter repeatedly deploys push questions, I advocate going all the way to the more confrontational: “The premise of your question is a lie.”)
The bridge is: “As a matter of fact....” And then deploy your agenda point and shut up -- don’t go back and revisit the false premise.
The push poll examples I cited earlier -- the McCain illegitimate child and the Chen asylum denial questions -- were calculated gambits. Oftentimes, a reporter will have the same calculus in mind when he frames a push question; he is trying to trap you. But other reporters will base a question on a false premise because they are unaware of the error; they actually believe you did beat your wife -- or whatever other fantasy forms the premise of the question.
Regardless of a reporter’s motives, it’s essential to refute immediately the premise of a push question. If the reporter is asking the question out of ignorance and you don’t correct him, he’ll continue to believe the premise and it may wind up in his story. If the reporter is trying to trip you up, challenging the premise lets him know you are on to his game and will not fall for it.
Fundamental to using a push question -- or any media question for that matter -- is having an agenda of your own for the interview. But you knew that.
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