This week on CounterSpin: Most of the coverage of the political conventions focused on what was going on inside the arenas; so what about what was happening outside? Crackdowns on protests, arrests of journalists, and pre-emptive house raids could provide a very different measure of the state of American democracy. Heidi Boghosian of the National Lawyers Guild will join us to tell us what she saw.

Also on the show: A new book attests to what some have long suspected: that opinion polls can distort understanding of public opinion more than illuminate it-- ginning up controversy where none exists and giving an unearned stamp of public approval to policies favored by the powerful. David Moore was a senior editor at the Gallup Poll for 13 years; he's author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls. We'll hear what he has to say.



Links:

— National Lawyers Guild

—The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls, by David W. Moore