Journalistic Standards and Practices

IV. PRODUCTION STANDARDS

C: ONLINE POLICIES

2. ONLINE POLLING

The CBC does not conduct online polling on questions related to political or public policy issues and does not use the results of such votes online or on the air.

Online polling - where users are invited to register their opinion only by clicking "yes" or "no" - is vulnerable to manipulation by any group that is so inclined. Publication of the results of online polling has no information value and may be misleading.

By limiting the application of this restriction to political and public policy items, it does not explicitly prohibit casual polling on entertainment programs, featuring polls about actors, sports and a great number of other non-journalistic matters.

Because there is often no clear line separating entertainment items from political or public policy matters, unclear situations should be referred to the senior officer in information programming.

Online polls may also raise legal issues particular to this form of communication. CBC employees may obtain a summary and interpretation of the applicable law from the CBC Law Department.

Reference:
IV.A.2.3. Non-Scientific Surveys