This article written by Chrisco

We return today to the topic of Frank Luntz, and Newsnight’s decision to employ him as their focus group pollster. On the face of it Dr. Luntz has an impeccable pedigree: PhD in Political Science, winner of the 1992 Washington Post “Crystal Ball� award for most accurate pundit in the ’92 elections, 2001 Emmy winner for his MSNBC/CNBC segments ‘100 Days/1000 Voices’ and pioneer of the ‘instant response’ focus group technique (as seen on Newsnight) which was profiled on the pre-eminent American news programme, 60 Minutes, in 1998.

So, on paper at least Luntz sounds like the perfect man to run focus groups for the BBC’s Newsnight – a young, bold and pioneering pollster. But in recent years in the United States Dr. Luntz’s reputation for impartiality has taken something of a battering; he is still highly successful and influential, but his position comes from his role as a strategist for the Republican party, not as an impartial pollster. Even this, however, must be qualified: Luntz does not specialize in finding out what the public likes and dislikes. He is an expert at using focus groups to test marketing strategies, i.e. in political terms, how to find the best way to sell a message to the public. He is conservative America’s Alistair Campbell and Philip Gould all rolled into one. U.S. Vice-President Cheney’s wife, Lynne, may have famously remarked about John Kerry that “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig�, but Frank Luntz is the man to call in if you’re a conservative and you want to find a way to convince people that it’s not.

“When the going gets tough, the Republicans call in the master. No-one has been more successful at the rhetoric of political seduction than Frank Luntz. He’s a magician with a gift for the politics of words… When others talk it is often Frank Luntz speaking.�

His polling methods have also come under scrutiny:

- In 1997 he was reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research after he refused to hand over polling data that he claimed demonstrated widespread public support for Newt Gingrich’s ‘Contract with America’, citing client confidentiality. Luntz also happened to be one of the chief architects of the ‘Contract with America’.
- In 2000 he was reprimanded by the (American) National Council on Public Polls for allegedly mischaracterizing on MSNBC the results of focus groups he conducted during the 2000 Republican Convention.
- This chimes with claims made by millennium elephant that Luntz misrepresented the sentiment of the room during his latest Newsnight piece.

Now, none of this is really criticism of Frank Luntz – he is after all just doing his job as a conservative strategist, as the pre-eminent ‘framer’ of the political debate for the conservative cause, the most successful practitioner of political reality construction. So successful is he at influencing people through the use of language, that he is the subject of a Linguistics class at the University of Massachussetts.

But given his manifest lack of neutrality, and alleged personal links to David Cameron, the question is should he be conducting supposedly ‘neutral’ polls for Newsnight? And has he been advising David Cameron on his media strategy at any point since Cameron launched his leadership bid?

We cannot trust Luntz to come clean on this, nor can the BBC. MSNBC dumped him as a pollster and commentator in the run-up to the 2004 Presidential election after complaints about his bias from the organization Media Matters for America. Luntz claimed that he had done no work for the Republican Party since 2001, a claim which was later shown to be false.

So, the question again needs to be asked, should Newsnight really be employing a man who is friends with three key backers of David Cameron’s leadership bid, who equates “manipulation� with “explanation and education� and who has in the past lied about his links to conservatives while polling for a national broadcaster? And has Luntz been advising David Cameron on his media strategy while at the same time 'demonstrating' the success of that media strategy via Newsnight’s focus groups?

If Millenium Elephant is to be believed, in the latest Newsnight piece on voting prospects in advance of the local elections, the voters in the room had a much more positive reaction to Ming Campbell, and a much more skeptical reaction to David Cameron, than the edited version demonstrated.

In the first of the two Newsnight pieces, we hear Luntz ask his audience, "What do you see about David Cameron in terms of local issues." We also hear him ask "In terms of local issues, why Cameron and not Blair?" Millenium Elephant claims that Ming was the most trusted of the three candidates, and the man they thought would be best for local government. They also felt that the Liberal Democrats were the party most trusted to get things sorted out locally; this was all skipped over by the piece Luntz put out on air.

Introducing Cameron, the Newsnight audience was told they would be hearing from him on "the health service, education and other issues." The Newsnight audience was later told that Ming Campbell would be talking on "Again some of the same issues, and some more particular to the Lib Dems." The implication to the Newsnight voter is that Lib Dems have 'particular issues' that are not shared by most people, a stereotype of the Lib Dems.

In the broadcast version, when it came to the party leaders, the question put to the audience with reference to Cameron was "Who had a positive reaction to that? Who had a negative reaction?" The broadcast version naturally showed a generally positive response.

Luntz's question after the Ming Campbell piece, however, was not whether the audience reaction was positive or negative, as he had done with Cameron, but whether Campbell "exceeded expectations, met them or disappointed them." This is a very different question from whether their reaction was overall positive or negative, since it is predicated on what their expectations were, not simply their reaction to the speech. So, the Newsnight audience is treated to an audience full of people saying that Ming Campbell disappointed them, not one saying that their overall reaction was positive (as was the case, we are led to believe).

In his conclusion, Luntz sums up that "the party leader and the party that are most about change will be most successful." By sheer coincidence the David Cameron piece that was broadcast had David Cameron talking about what he would change in the education system. Ming Campbell's piece had him talking about the Liberal Democrats being written off by the political establishment and local democratic decision making. Subliminal messaging? I am not much of a conspiracy theorist, and would not normally give credence to the idea, except for the fact that the man we are talking about is primarily known in the United States for his skills in subliminal and subconscious political messaging.

The Washington Post recently described Luntz as the "on-again, off-again Republican pollster", and urged its readers to take his findings "with a grain of salt".

After Luntz was dumped by MSNBC before the 2004 election, Media Matters for America CEO, David Brock, commented "It is encouraging that MSNBC responded to criticism in a constructive way. Clearly they realized that employing a partisan pollster does not reflect well on them as a responsible media outlet."

So why does another supposedly responsible media outlet, the BBC, give so much credence to his findings, especially when there exist strong suspicions that Luntz has in fact been advising Cameron on how to do well in his focus groups? No serious American media outlet would allow Luntz to present and edit the findings of his polling, yet he is allowed to do this on the BBC.

It is inconceivable that Newsnight would allow Philip Gould, or M'Lord Rennard to do the same.

So why is this conservative spin-doctor and master manipulator of public opinion, already dumped by one American news channel for bias and twice reprimanded for misrepresenting the findings of his polling, given a free reign by Newsnight?