Rachel Maddow accused Fox News of choosing which polls to use in figuring out which candidates would be in the Republican primary debate. She stated that Fox News was supposed to use 5 recent acknowledged polls as they have promised to. But then, Fox News "skipped" the NBC/WSJ/ poll even though it is the 5th most recent recognized poll.
The result then, was that Gov. Rick Perry of Texas wasn't in the 10th place to tie with John Kasich. He was actually in the 11th place. Maddow then implied that "it appears that what they did is just kick out the poll results that would make it look too close".
However, it was said that Fox did not actually ignored the poll, at least not subjectively, as Fox announced hours before Maddow expressed her disappointment, that they did not include the highly respected poll:
"We did not include the highly-respected NBC/WSJ poll, which is the fifth most recent poll, only because it did not meet our criterion that the poll read the names of each Republican candidate in the vote question. We would note, however, even though their ballot question included Perry but did not name Kasich, the unaided "Kasich" response tied the aided "Perry" response. In short, their results are consistent with the results of the other polls in our review, and consistent with the resulting placement in the Fox News debate."
Different opinions have been presented on different websites, and it remains a debate as to who is correct and who isn't.
A source said that since the announcement of Fox came in before Maddow's big reactions, "she had just enough time to wind up for more Fox News bashing."
Another source also pointed out that Maddow may have a point, but Fox News "chose their selection criteria in a self-serving way and framing Fox's decision as arbitrary and lacking reason, Maddow may have overstepped."
As of the fifth of August, an update from Maddow's show was received, saying:
"We are saying what was released yesterday was different from what the network said back in May. Before Fox announced who was in and out of their debate, Fox never before specified this as a criterion that polls would have to meet in order to be included in their "five most recent national polls" average:
"Their GOP primary vote question mirrored the ballot by reading all candidate names in random order and without honorifics."
Fox asserted on August 4th that NBC/WSJ was excluded because it did not meet that specific criterion, but they had never announced that criterion before August 4th. A surprise to everyone, announced after the fact."
