Bill Moyers, PBS. “Leading Questions” examines the power of professional pollsters to influence public opinion. Nearly everyone - from the makers of cake mix to network executives and candidates for high office - seeks to become the intimate of our private opinions. In the hands of campaign consultants, sophisticated techniques of market research become tools of political persuasion. “Leaders” find out what we think so they can tell us that’s what they think, too. The public is soothed into feeling good instead of thinking critically. Techniques are designed to bring out the most emotional visuals with which to appeal to an increasingly indifferent society. Politics becomes a spectator sport instead of a participatory process, and the public “debate” becomes a meaningless theatrical “event.”

Among those interviewed are Richard Wirthlin, former pollster to President Reagan; Barbara Lippert, advertising critic of Ad Week magazine; Paul Taylor, reporter for The Washington Post; R.W. Apple Junior, reporter for The New York Times; Paula Drillman, Director of Strategic Planning at the McCann-Erickson Advertising Agency; David Poltrack, Senior Vice-President for Planning and Research at CBS; Peter Hart, political pollster; Ralph Whitehead, Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Massachusetts; and the Poss family of Eau Claire, Wisconsin.