Kathleen A. Frankovic, Director of Surveys and Producer of CBS News, was the guest speaker at BLS’s annual Media and Society Lecture on Monday, April 8. In her talk, “Public Opinion in the News,” she explored the issues concerning the role of public opinion polls in American politics and society.

Acknowledging that we live in a “polling culture,” Frankovic briefed the audience on the history of public opinion polls and the dramatic increase in their use since the early nineteenth century. Scientific polling didn’t emerge, she noted, until the 1930s, when new methodologies were introduced by George Gallup, Elmo Roper, and Andrew Crossley. It was in the 1970s, when media groups began conducting their own polls, that the “significant presence” of polls as a measure of “how Americans think and why” took hold, said Frankovic.

Frankovic acknowledged that there have always been detractors of polling – and agreed that there are legitimate concerns related to methodological questions. Despite the attacks on polls, “they are extraordinarily successful, and permit individuals to understand where they fit into the political system,” she said. They are a necessity to democracy, she concluded, “because they keep the system honest.”

Since 1977, Frankovic has been the head of the unit of CBS that collects and analyzes election data and conducts and broadcasts the results from CBS News and CBS News/New York Times Polls. She also serves on the Steering committee of Voter News Service, the consortium of major news organizations that conducts exit polls, collects actual vote results, and projects winners. She was a member of the special three-person CBS News panel that reviewed election night coverage of the Bush/Gore campaign. She is also the co-author of The Election of 1980, The Election of 1992, and The Election of 2000, and has published many articles on elections and public opinion.

Before joining CBS in 1977, she was a political science professor at the University of Vermont, and Director of its Social Science Research Center. In 1997, she received the Mary Lepper Award, given by the Woman’s Caucus for Political Science to a political scientist who has distinguished herself outside of academia. In 1997, as well, she was the Professional-in-Residence at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Media and Society Lecture is held annually in the spring and features distinguished leaders in the media who speak on current issues of national import. Previous speakers in the series include: Reed Hundt, former FCC Commissioner, Russell Lewis ’73, CEO of The New York Times, Jack Fuller, President of the Tribune Publishing Company, and Pulitzer prize-winning columnists Anthony Lewis and Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times.

View the video.