Word: questions
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...high divorce rate, new stresses and tensions in the sex wars and easy opportunities for extramarital adventures. Not so, according to a new survey conducted by Gallup for Psychology Today and two national TV programs, King World's Inside Edition and ABC's HOME. Although some experts question its accuracy, the poll indicates Americans are surprisingly and happily monogamous. In the survey, 90% of husbands and wives said they had never been unfaithful to their spouses, and most gave high approval ratings to their mates...
Obviously rushed into print, Barbarians is rich in detail and anecdote but poor in analysis, often reading like 100 Wall Street Journal articles pasted end to end. After a forced march through the history of the RJR fight, the narrative ends on a question that should have been raised -- and wrestled with -- from the start: "What did all this have to do with doing business...
...where, oh, where has my little dog gone?" That old musical question now has a modern answer. A California-based company called Infopet is selling a - computer-age tag: a microchip that is easily implanted between a pet's shoulder blades. The semiconductor carries a ten-digit code, which can be read by a scanner. When the code is punched into Infopet's computers, an animal's finder can obtain such data as the pet's license number, medical condition and, most important, the owner's phone number...
...these skeptical times, polls may be the one remaining authority that the press customarily accepts without question. The subject may be the Panama invasion (the public supported it), the arrest of Mayor Marion Barry (Washingtonians thought he should resign), or Jane Pauley's treatment by NBC (PEOPLE readers who answered a call-in survey found it unfair), but editors rarely meet a poll they don't like. Polls have even been published reporting the number of California drivers with paraphernalia hanging from their rearview mirrors (8%), and Iowans with ornaments on their lawns...
...more respect than they deserve. After all, polls are no more accurate on press credibility than they are on any other subject. When pre-election polls in New York and Virginia went awry last fall, the almost unanimous press query was, How could they have been so wrong? That question has plagued journalism since at least 1936, when the Literary Digest predicted that Alf Landon would become President of the U.S. A more appropriate question might be, Why do we so expect them to be right...