The Media's Fake Poll Flub

Earlier this week, the California Post, the fledgling Los Angeles-based tabloid of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, reported a shocking story about a bogus poll from a fake firm called “Median Strategies” that fooled everyone up to the city’s mayor, Karen Bass.

The story featured a comment from Bass, whose office demanded that those behind it face the “full force of the law.” It ended with a comment from a veteran political consultant who said that “whoever is responsible for this ought to be exposed.”

But if you squint hard enough in the story itself, you can see who was responsible for it, or at least most responsible for laundering the bogus numbers into the mainstream: the California Post. It was the outlet itself that first ran with the poll, several days before anyone else even noticed anything was amiss.