The One American News Network cable channel thought it could curry favor with Donald Trump by doing a poll that had different result from a recent poll by CNN that has Biden leading Trump by a double digit margin….(Trump doesn’t like Fox News polls these days either)
There are also several new polls that show Biden besting Trump by numbers ion the double digits….
So?
OAN gets a pollster to do a poll in. Florida….
And what happens?
The poll come out 50%/50% Biden /Trump…..
Hmmmm?
Embarrassed with the results?
The poll ends up finally being pulled….
Hmmmm?
OAN is a small network, clearly seeking to make its name in part by promising endlessly obsequious coverage of the president. The network has often explicitly asked Trump to watch it instead of Fox, as chief executive Robert Herring did Wednesday.
Trump does watch. It was an OAN report about the protester in Buffalo who was injured by police in that city which prompted Trump to speculate wildly that the elderly man who suffered a head injury had faked his fall in service to a murky network of left-wing anarchists.
Herring defended that report Thursday, writing that his network had “put out our facts” on the incident, while the mainstream media hadn’t done so. There is no evidence of the claims made in the report, though OAN’s reporter Kristian Rouz did certainly offer up some allegations.
That tweet was followed up with another attempt to goad the mainstream media.
Robert Herring@RobHerringJust to add some fuel to the fire, did you see our poll on Florida? @OANN
Herring had on Wednesday pledged an upcoming poll, as the Trump campaign’s feud with CNN over its national poll was heating up. He promised that OAN would be “releasing a poll concerning the 2020 presidential race” that “looks as though it will be in favor of” the president.
Early Thursday afternoon, the poll came out. Conducted by Gravis Marketing, a pollster that earns a C in FiveThirtyEight’s ranking of pollsters, it was focused solely on Florida.
It had Trump and Biden tied in the must-win state for Trump, a state Trump won narrowly four years ago.
OAN produced a video segment on the poll, again featuring Rouz, which appeared on its website. Soon after it was published, though, the report was pulled. A tweet from Herring that apparently announced the results was also deleted.
Both the page and the video report were captured, however. The screenshot above comes from Google’s cache; the report can be seen on YouTube thanks to writer Arieh Kovler.
The poll itself and Rouz’s report on the poll immediately raise red flags in a variety of ways….
…
This entire polling effort by OAN is a remarkable, if unintentional, window into how the network works. Its chief executive trumpets a poll that he promises is likely to show Trump doing well. His on-air reporter gins up a thoroughly misleading presentation of results that are far from great for the president. For some reason — but probably exactly that reason — the story and the report get deep-sixed.
After all, Trump’s not going to want to watch that. We don’t want him switching over to Fox, now, do we?