Misleading poll question sets up obvious answer
The local newspaper, the Verde Independent, has been under attack by various member of the Verde Valley Community College Citizen Advocates group for its failure to accurately report on information about Yavapai Community College and for withholding information that shows a disparity between the treatment of residents of the West County and those on the East County. The newspaper has stated that its readers are “becoming a bit burned-out over the `Prescott vs Verde Valley’ dynamic.”
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In what some may see as retaliation, the newspaper began running a poll asking readers whether the Verde Valley Community College Citizen Advocates should be allowed to ban people from their meetings? This is the result of the group asking one member of the public to leave the meeting who the group believed was not making positive contributions to its mission.
What is left out for obvious reasons was asking a proper question. For example, a proper question would read something like this: “Should an independent, citizens group, not subject to state open meeting requirements, be allowed to bar persons who may publicly attack the group in newspaper editorials, at public gatherings where members are speaking, and or disrupt regularly scheduled group meeting?” Should members of the Rotary, Kiwanis, or YMCA have to tolerate such persons at their meetings? Or welcome them to their meetings after they are publicly attacked and disparaged? Or called names at public meetings such as liars?
That, of course, would have been an honest poll question regarding this particular group. However, the newspaper, as you can see from below, was not interested in that type of question or response to it.