Pets prevail in election coverage July 8, 2008

Deadline’s fast approaching. Your editor tells you to write a story on the election. There’s nothing new – Obama and McCain have bored you to tears ever since the Democratic Primary ended. The election is still a few months away. The conventions haven’t even happened.

What do you do?

Contact pet associations and get their take.

That’s what the AP did. The article actually ended up in CBS3′s “News of the Strange” section. The article, which says that people who own pets will most likely vote for Sen. McCain, is based on an AP-Yahoo! poll.

But, it’s written like the writer was scrambling for information, for facts, for substance. And that’s where it loses me.

It’s no use to predict who’s going to be president until election night. Polling is usually flawed. I don’t care what pet lovers think. I don’t care what ice cream scoopers think. If I cared what psychics think, then I don’t anymore.

(The world’s only psychic twins, who just happen to be Temple alumnae, predicted in March that Sen. Hillary Clinton would be the next president. While that’s not fully out of the picture yet, it does seem quite unlikely.)

And we all wonder why the media get criticized so much.