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Canadian Pollster Cleared of Bias
In Canada, the public broadcaster's ombudsman has cleared pollster Frank Graves of any wrongdoing, after accusations that he worked as an adviser to the Liberal Party and was unfit to provide impartial polls to broadcaster CBC.
Graves, one of four national pollsters who provide surveys to the broadcaster, was quoted in the newspaper the Globe and Mail (www.theglobeandmail.com ) saying that he had 'told' Michael Ignatieff's Liberal Party they should launch a 'culture war' against the Tories. He explained this as a remark made in an informal conversation, but many people assumed Graves and his company Ekos Research were acting as advisers to the Liberals, whose Conservative opponents cried foul and accused CBC of providing tainted polls, following which CBC received some eight hundred complaints from citizens.
In his report this week, Ombudsman Vince Carlin said Graves does not work for the Liberal Party and does not make 'partisan statements' in his television commentary; that his data or findings have never been challenged; and that if anything he is guilty of being too open in explaining his data, to the extent that were he working for the Liberals he might be fired for giving away their strategy.
Carlin said that every government from Trudeau onwards had seen the press, and specifically CBC, as 'hostile' to their intentions but concluded that whatever Graves' political views, he is not a CBC journalist and there is no 'serious suggestion that the process has been skewed' or that there had been any violation of CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices'.
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