A repeat participant in focus groups televised on Fox and conducted by pollster Frank Luntz casts doubt on the credibility of both Luntz and the network.

Follow this link to the original source: "Luntz Explains His Mystery Man"

COMMENTARY:

Fair and balanced. That’s the Fox News marketing slogan. Sharp eyed viewers of Frank Luntz’ undecided voter focus group sessions on the news channel, however, may have caught the channel stacking the deck, so to speak. As pointed out by TPM Muckraker and a number of bloggers, one panel participant in the January 6 Luntz focus group "actually appeared in a prior Luntz Fox News focus group four months prior."

In that session on September 5, 2007, after a Fox News political debate, members of the Luntz post-debate focus group, supposedly randomly chosen because they were undecided voters, were interviewed by Luntz on their impressions of the candidates. Citizen "Chuck" was called upon and spoke of John McCain as being a "viable opponent," and Hillary Clinton as "too divisive."

Fast-forward to the January 6, 2008 Fox Forum in New Hampshire. Frank Luntz again was talking to another focus group of supposedly randomly chosen undecided voters after the debate. First up in the video is a woman who has decided on Mitt Romney because he spoke about competition with China and because, in her opinion, his corporate experience and leadership would be good for America.

Then Luntz chose another individual from the audience to offer his views. Surprise, surprise, it was the very same "Chuck" as four months earlier. This time "Chuck" is pro-Romney and says, Romney is a "viable opponent," as in the forum he came across "clearly and concisely." As TPM Muckraker pointed out, "Chuck" is easily "identifiable through his appearance and voice -- either that, or he's got an identical twin."

Fox News, via Hannity and Colmes, declared the results of the focus group to be "surprising feedback." Said Luntz, it’s "quite interesting to hear what our voters had to say."

What is more interesting is the fact that Fox News and Frank Luntz are either incompetent or conniving in including the same person in more than one focus group. A cynic might be tempted to think that "Chuck" was a plant. One expert speculated that Luntz was incompetent. From TPM Muckraker:

In fact, the inclusion of repeat attendees in Luntz focus groups is intentional. According to TPM Muckraker, Luntz is "conducting a ‘study of human behavior’ with his dial tests (a mechanism that registers viewers' moment by moment reaction) he said, not a traditional focus group. And if you ‘want to understand how people change their points of view, you have to ask them over time and multiple times. This is how social biologists do it. This is anthropology.... If you're goal is to study how opinions change over time, of course you've got to call them back.’"

Critics have alleged, however, that Luntz and Fox have been trying to manipulate public opinion rather than report the news in a "fair and balanced" manner. Luntz denies the charge: "That's ridiculous.... I'm sure that the person who said that doesn't have a PhD, probably doesn't have a masters, and doesn't know what they're talking about."

That kind of response does little to enhance Luntz’ flagging credibility. In fact, he is a master propagandist and has been called on the carpet for his antics in the past. Writing in Salon in 2000, Dante Chini pointed out: "In 1997, Luntz was formally reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for his work polling on the GOP's 1994 ‘Contract with America’ campaign document." When challenged by the AAPOR to substantiate his polling claims related to that effort, Luntz either couldn’t or wouldn’t, leading to the reprimand.

Luntz came under fire again just a few years later. In 2000, the Washington Post reported that the National Council on Public Polls "censured pollster Frank Luntz for allegedly mischaracterizing on MSNBC the results of focus groups he conducted during the Republican Convention."

That sounds familiar. Whatever Luntz is doing on Fox with his "focus groups," its not science and its not even social science. Instead, it is an example of yellow journalism and nearly undisguised political propaganda designed to be misleading and manipulative. But, have we come to expect anything else from the very unbalanced and unfair reporting the mainstream media has offered us this election?