Western Wats and Push Polling, From the Inside

The City Weekly's Eric Peterson posted an item on the Salt Blog about Western Wats and their push polling. He knows, because he used to work for them.

We used to have to conduct surveys for example that were hired by Pharmaceutical companies where we would conduct "research" on peoples opinions about buying medication in Canada. We would ask their opinion on buying cheap meds over the border, and then we would list them negative facts about the "dangers" of Canadian meds and then ask them to rate their opinion on them again, and then we would list more dangers, and then rate their opinion again and again ad nauseum.

Essentially we were contracted to do aggressive research. Research that was meant not to gather unbiased opinion, but to change opinion. And I would tell every person I called that was exactly what was going on--only way I could conscienably do that job for six bucks an hour.

Now who knows for sure if they are doing that now, but one needs to remember that companies like Western Wats aren't think tanks that have researchers who write and craft official studies. No they contract out to hire poor college and high school kids to call and harass people at all hours of the day and night reading them surveys (written by their clients) with definite political agendas.