By Bill Bernardoni
A made-up polling firm got into national headlines, and Washington answered with a warning to broadcasters. The stations most likely to listen are the ones that can least afford to guess.
I’ve produced a nationally syndicated radio show, hosted my own local and syndicated shows, and worked in station leadership. In every one of those jobs, the scariest emails didn’t come from listeners. They were the ones that mentioned the license. You read them twice and forward them to whoever handles legal, if anybody does. Then everybody in the building gets a little more careful about what goes on the air.
So I’ve been reading last week’s news as a station guy.
A polling outfit called Wedgewood admitted that most of its numbers were made up, PBS reported, after national outlets had cited its data. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr then warned broadcasters that airing bad polls could run afoul of the agency’s news distortion and hoax rules. On Oct. 22, Commissioner Anna Gomez wrote to the National Association of Broadcasters asking it to tell stations what the law actually requires.
Here’s my take. Carr is right that newsrooms got fooled. But the fix was never going to come from Washington. The fix is the five-minute check newsrooms used to run on every number before it went on air.
Carr Has a Point
I’ll start with the chairman, because the lazy version of this column just dunks on him. I’ll dunk on him where he earns it. First, he gets credit for the point he’s got.
“Many journalists and broadcasters have been amplifying or airing these Polls without regard to basic journalistic ethics,” he wrote, per Deadline. On Wedgewood, he’s not wrong. According to PBS, its website listed no employee names, no phone number, and no address. Ipsos’s Courtney Kennedy gave PBS the simplest test there is: “Have you heard of the pollster? Do they have a track record? That’s a big tell.”
I know that test from the other side of the table. Before media production, I spent years in Illinois campaigns and learned which pollsters answer the phone and which ones sell a story. Campaigns live and die on whether a number is real. When a firm has no names, no number, and no address, you don’t put its poll in a memo for the candidate. You sure as hell don’t put it on the air.
This is also what happens when newsrooms are badly understaffed. The five-minute check only works if somebody has five minutes: a producer or an editor between the number and the microphone. Cut that person to save money, and a fake poll walks onto the air. Journalists didn’t stop caring about ethics. There just wasn’t anyone left to run the check.
I’ve watched that math play out. One person used to pull wire copy, another wrote it, and a third asked “where’d this come from?” before it aired. Now it’s one person doing all three, live, with a spot break in ninety seconds. Every corner you cut in that building eventually shows up on the air.
Broadcasters also carry public-interest obligations that print and podcasts don’t. That’s the deal that comes with the airwaves. The press deserves scrutiny, and it does. You can’t wave this one off just because of who’s doing the scrutinizing.
The Rules Are Narrower Than the Warning
The FCC’s own explanation of its policy says broadcasters face enforcement only if it can be proven they “deliberately distorted a factual news report,” and that “errors stemming from mistakes are not actionable.” A station that reports a public poll in good faith and gets burned made a mistake. It didn’t distort the news.
That’s the core of Gomez’s letter. She’s the commission’s lone Democrat, so read her with that in mind. But the standard she’s pointing to belongs to the agency, not to her. News distortion requires “documented evidence of an intentional effort to mislead the public,” she wrote, per Deadline. The hoax rule covers knowingly false reports about a crime or catastrophe that cause real harm.
None of that is obscure. But a station manager in a small market isn’t going to read FCC policy statements at 5 a.m. They’ll read the headline, and the headline said “license.”
The Stations Without Lawyers Go Quiet
The sentence in her letter that stuck with me wasn’t about the law. It was about who gets hurt. NAB, she wrote, as quoted by Radio Ink, speaks for “thousands of stations nationwide, many of which do not have the legal resources or the political standing to push back on their own when the FCC comes calling.”
That’s what a broad warning does two weeks before an election, with no polls or stations named. A big group has a Washington law firm on call. A small-market morning show often has one person hosting, producing, and deciding what makes air. I’ve been that person in more than one market, as a host and as a producer.
Picture the 6 a.m. version. A new poll is in your inbox, the race is close, and the phones are already lighting up about it. You’re the host, the producer, and the standards desk all at once. A federal warning just landed, and it didn’t name a poll or a station. That’s a brutal call, and Carr needs to keep it in mind. For that host, the safest move is to drop polls altogether, good ones included.
Calling that sharper journalism would be generous. It’s silence, and it leaves listeners with less information instead of better information. It also doesn’t touch the people who actually made the numbers up.
NAB’s answer so far has been measured. A spokesperson said it will “continue working with her and all policymakers to protect broadcasters’ rights,” per Deadline. Fair enough. But the stations that most need a clear answer are the ones least likely to call a lawyer and ask.
What NAB Should Put in Members’ Inboxes This Week
I understand why NAB is choosing its words carefully. It’s the middle of an election, the chairman is in a fighting mood, and a trade group that picks a public brawl with its regulator has to live with that regulator long after Election Day. A measured tone is a reasonable call in Washington.
A measured tone doesn’t help a station in a town of 15,000, though. “We’ll keep working to protect broadcasters’ rights” won’t tell anybody what to do with tomorrow’s poll. Members need clarity before Nov. 3, not after. NAB, and the big groups with legal departments, should put four things in members’ inboxes this week.
First, the FCC’s own standard in plain English. Restate the agency’s own policy: enforcement requires proof that a station deliberately distorted the news, and honest mistakes are not actionable. A station that airs a poll in good faith, after checking it, is not breaking the law if the poll later turns out to be bad. Say it in three sentences, not thirty pages.
Second, the five-minute check. Before a poll goes on air, somebody asks:
- Who did it, and does a real person answer when you call?
- Does the firm list names, a phone number, and an address?
- How many people did they reach, how, and with what margin of error?
- Does it line up with other polls, and if not, why not?
- Who paid for it?
If you can’t answer those questions, the poll doesn’t air. If you can, you’ve done what a responsible newsroom does.
Third, silence doesn’t make a station compliant. A station that stops reporting every poll hasn’t become safer. It has just become less useful. NAB should tell members plainly that the law asks for good faith, not for blackouts. Otherwise the warning ends up doing quietly what nobody would dare order out loud.
Fourth, a one-pager. Plenty of NAB members have no counsel at all. What they need is one page they can tape next to the board: the standard, the checklist, and who to call if a letter shows up. Big groups already hand that kind of thing to their own stations. A wait-and-see statement doesn’t help the person running the board alone at 6 a.m.
None of that requires NAB to pick a fight with Carr. It just has to do its job for the members who can’t do it themselves.
Vetting Is a Habit, Not a Federal Rule
What actually works is older and more boring than any of this. Somebody checks the number before it airs, every time, whether or not Washington is watching.
That’s what network radio drilled into us: you don’t say it until you know it. Nobody invented that standard for this moment. It’s the one every newsroom had when there was always a producer or an editor between the number and the microphone.
The habit matters most right now. In the final week before a midterm, polls come fast, campaigns push the ones they like, and every outlet wants the freshest number. That’s exactly when a shop with no address and no phone looks like a scoop. The pressure to be first is real, and so is the cost of being wrong.
The Bottom Line
Wedgewood said it wanted to prove the system was easy to fool. Fine. It did. Bravo.
But don’t confuse a stunt with a public service. They made up numbers, fed them into the bloodstream, and then took a bow for showing how easy it was. The people who got burned didn’t invent the fake firm. They’re the understaffed newsrooms and the solo morning hosts who trusted a source that never deserved the air. Wedgewood claims it exposed a flaw. What it actually did was exploit one, and it left small stations holding the bag while Washington argued about licenses.
The polling didn’t fail on its own. The vetting did. And the people who made the numbers up still walk.
Regulators shouldn’t decide which polls stations may air. Newsrooms should run a five-minute check, every time.
No names, no phone number, no address, no airtime.
Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing in Ottawa, Illinois, and co-host of America at 250: Due Diligence with former Voice of America White House bureau chief Steve Herman.
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