Re: Educating Journalists

["DAVE GILMORE" <DGILMORE@navajo.astate.edu>]

> All may not be as black as it seems. During the last month, one of you
> called attention to the series of articles in the Boston Globe on the
> "Nuclear Twilight in New England". At that website, there was a poll
> which allowed you to vote your opinion on Nuclear Power. The results of
> that poll indicate that over 80% of the people voting were in favor of
> nuclear power. I have learned that Collective Joe Voter most generally
> has good judgement, but this surprised even me. Have you Radsafers been
> stuffing the polling box?

Wait a minute... does this remind anybody of an election poll done 
earlier this century  where the Republican was supposed to win, but 
it turned out that most of the people that could afford telephones 
this early in their history were Republicans?  Somehow it seems very 
unlikely to me that Collective Joe Voter even knows what a website 
is.  How about 80% of the highly educated, computer literate people 
that would bother to visit a newspaper website (this third one 
excludes me) are in favor of nuclear power?  The poll should have 
asked two questions: 1 do you favor nuclear power; 2 Do you bowl?

David F. Gilmore
Assistant Professor of Environmental Biology    0  0 
P.O. Box 599, Dept. of Biological Sciences       __    "have a day" 
Arkansas State University 
State University, AR 72467
dgilmore@navajo.astate.edu
ph  501-972-3082    fax 501-972-2638