Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

‘A worse importation than chewing gum’: American Influences on The Australian Press and Their Limits—The Australian Gallup Poll, 1941–1973

2010; Routledge; Volume: 30; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439685.2010.505020

1465-3451

Murray Goot,

Media Studies and Communication

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments I am grateful to Nathalie Apouchtine, Matthew Bailey, Sofia Eriksson, Catie Gilchrist, Carla Pascoe, Nayantara Pothen, Tom Roberts, Jarvis Ryan and Kathleen Weekley for assistance with the primary research; to Bridget Griffen-Foley for notes from her research, Gary Morgan for access to the Roy Morgan papers and Jill Roe for notes from the Miles Franklin papers, to Tom Roberts, Tim Rowse, Sean Scalmer, Rodney Tiffen and Richard White for reading an earlier draft; and to the Australian Research Council for funding, most recently via DP0987839. Notes 1 See, for example, Richard W. Budd, U.S. news in the press down under, Public Opinion Quarterly, 28 (1964), 39–56; C. A. Hughes and J. S. Western, The geographical sources of foreign news in Australian newspapers, Australian Outlook, 27/1 (1973), 86–97; Bruce Grundy, Overseas news in the Australian press, in: Patricia Edgar (ed.), The News in Focus: the journalism of exception (South Melbourne, 1980). 2 Cf. Richard White's view that ‘press coverage of American affairs has been meagre’; ‘Americanization’ of popular culture in Australia, Teaching History, 12, 1978, 8; A backwater awash: the Australian experience of Americanisation, Theory, Culture and Society, 1(3) (1983), 113. 3 W. Sprague Holden, Australia Goes to Press (Parkville, Vic., 1961/1962), 145, 154–155, 159. 4 Richard White, The importance of being Man, in: Peter Spearritt and David Walker (eds), Australian Popular Culture (Sydney, 1979), 145. For a slightly more forthcoming account, which refers to ‘American columnists’ being ‘often syndicated to Australian newspapers,’ see L. G. Churchward, Australia & America 1788–1972: an alternative history (Sydney, 1979), 184–185. 5 Rodney Tiffen, News and Power (Sydney, 1989), 16, 37. 6 See: Richard White, A backwater awash, 108–122; Tom O’Regan, Australian Television Culture (St Leonards, NSW, 1993), Ch. 4; and The united tastes of Australia, in: Tony Bennett, Michael Emmison and John Frow (eds), Accounting for Tastes: Australian everyday cultures (Cambridge, 1999), Ch. 8. 7 Holden, Australia Goes to Press, 7. 8 Henry Mayer, The Press in Australia (Melbourne, 1964); K. S. Inglis, The daily papers, in: Peter Coleman (ed.), Australian Civilization: a symposium (Melbourne, 1962), 149. 9 Michael Schudson, The US model of journalism: exception or exemplar?, in: Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press (Cambridge, 2005/2008), 27. Jeremy Tunstall notes that Australia ‘developed a frontier press similar in some respects to that of the United States’; The Media Are American (London, 1977), 102–103. 10 Philip Bell and Roger Bell, Implicated: the United States in Australia (Melbourne, 1993), ix. 11 Humphrey McQueen, Australia's Media Monopolies (Camberwell, Vic., 1977), 185–191. 12 R. W. Connell, Myths media and the middle class, New Journalist, no. 13, 1974; reprinted in Ruling Class Ruling Culture (Cambridge, 1977), Ch. 9. 13 Rosemary Righter, Whose News? Politics, the Press and the Third World (London, 1978), 24–25. UPI was UP until 1953. 14 Stefan Kotze, Australian Sketches, trans. L. L. Politizer (Melbourne, 1903/1945), 99–100. 15 Cited in White, A backwater awash, 117. 16 McQueen, Australia's Media Monopolies, 144–148. 17 Walker, Yesterday's News (Sydney, 1980), 36, 74, 84, 98; Anthony Smith, The Newspaper: an international history (London, 1979), 160; Martin Conboy, The Press and Popular Culture (London, 2002), 6, 60, 127–130. Bridget Griffen-Foley argues that in deciding to include comics, Sunday Telegraph executives ‘must have been aware’ of George Gallup's 1931 readership study in Iowa that suggested adults preferred comics to news stories; The House of Packer: the making of a media empire (St Leonards, NSW, 1999), 83. 18 W. K. Hancock, Australia (London, 1930), 285. 19 R. S. Whitington, Sir Frank: the Frank Packer story (North Melbourne, 1971), 78; for ‘Miss Australia,’ see R. B. Walker, Yesterday's News, 23–23, and Bridget Griffen-Foley, Sir Frank Packer: the young master (Sydney, 2000), 44ff. 20 Patrick Buckridge, The Scandalous Penton (St Lucia, Qld, 1994), 224–245. 21 David McNicoll, Luck's a Fortune (Sydney, 1979), 114; Smith, The Newspaper, 160. When another Packer product, the Bulletin, hired Peter Blazey in the 1980s, it took the title of his column, ‘The Intelligencer,’ from New York magazine; Peter Blazey, Screw Loose (Sydney, 1997), 272. 22 See, Audrey Tate, Fair Comment: the life of Pat Jarrett 1911–1990 (Carlton, Vic., 1996), esp. Ch 7 and 12; Keith Dunstan, No Brains at All: an autobiography (Ringwood, Vic., 1990), 136, 141. 23 Ben Hills, Breaking News: the golden age of Graham Perkin (Melbourne, 2010), 220–221, 224–225, 245, 263, 267, 294. 24 Sandra Norton, Tabloid Man: the life and times of Ezra Norton (Sydney, 2008), 15–16. 25 Denis Cryle, Murdoch's Flagship: 25 years of the Australian newspaper (Carlton, Vic., 2008), 175, 198. 26 Robin, Anglophiles and Austericans, The Australian Ugliness (Melbourne, 1960/2010), 88. 27 For a recent review, see Graeme Davison, Driving to Austerica: The Americanization of the postwar Australian city, in: Harold Bolitho and Chris Wallace-Crabbe (eds), Approaching Australia: papers from the Harvard Australian Studies Symposium (Cambridge, MA, 1998), 164–165. 28 White, A backwater awash, 108–109; ‘Americanization’ of popular culture in Australia, 7. 29 Boyd, Anglophiles and Austericans, 81. 30 When it was that Australian journalists started to interview politicians and publish their remarks is unclear, but it was almost certainly later than in Britain where ‘journalists began to accept the interview after 1900, often through American tutelage’; Schudson, The US model of journalism, 32. 31 Jean M. Converse, Survey Research in the United States: roots and emergence 1890–1960 (Berkeley, 1987), 93 (for quotas) and 202–203 (for area sampling). 32 Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: a social history of American newspapers (New York, 1978), 156. For the distinction, and its importance, see Judith Lichtenberg, In defense of objectivity, in: James Curran and Michael Gurevitch (eds), Mass Media and Society (London, 1991), Ch. 11 or her In defense of objectivity revisited, in: Curran and Gurevitch (eds), Mass Media and Society (3rd edn) (London, 2000), Ch. 11 33 Philip Meyer, Precision Journalism: a reporter's introduction to social science methods (2nd edn) (Bloomington, IN, 1979). 34 Osborne and Lewis, for whom the ‘public opinion industry,’ as they call it, ‘came of age in Australia in 1941’ with the founding of ‘the Australian Public Opinion Poll (Gallup) [sic]’ fail to mention either Murdoch or the Herald & Weekly Times, attributing the initiative instead to ‘the Roy Morgan Research Centre Pty Ltd,’ a company not formed until 1959; Graeme Osborne and Glen Lewis, Communication Traditions in Australia: packaging the people (2nd edn) (South Melbourne, 2001), 96. Most historians of the press ignore the polls altogether. 35 Desmond Zwar, In Search of Keith Murdoch (South Melbourne, 1980), 81. 36 Murray Goot, Newspaper circulation in Australia 1932–1977, Media Centre Papers 11 (Bundoora, Vic., 1979), 3, 7. 37 For each of the four countries, in this and the preceding paragraph, see George Gallup, Reporting public opinion in five nations, Public Opinion Quarterly 6(3) (1942), 429–436. See also, for the UK, Robert M. Worcester, British Public Opinion: a guide to the history and methodology of political opinion polling (Oxford, 1991), 5, and George H. Gallup (ed.), The Gallup International Public Opinion Poll: Great Britain, 1937–75 (New York, 1976); for France, Jean Stoetzel, Political opinion polling in France, in: Robert M. Worcester (ed.), Political Opinion Polling: an international review (London, 1983), 21, and George H. Gallup (ed.), The Gallup International Public Opinion Poll: France 1939, 1944–75 (New York, 1976); and for Canada, Daniel J. Robinson, The Measure of Democracy: polling, market research and public life, 1930–1945 (Toronto, 1999), 65–67. The 119 newspapers that subscribed to the AIPO findings, in 1940, are listed in George Gallup and Saul Forbes Rae, The Pulse of Democracy: the public opinion poll and how it works (New York, 1940), Appendix Two. 38 See, Rodney Tiffen, Media policy, in: Judith Brett, James Gillespie and Murray Goot (eds), Developments in Australian Politics (South Melbourne, 1994), 327–338. 39 On the US, see Martha Joynt Kumar and Alex Jones, Government and the press: issues and trends, in: Geneva Overholser and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (eds), The Press (New York, 2005), 233. 40 Stephen Mills, The New Machine Men (Ringwood, Vic., 1968), 115; see also Bridget Griffen-Foley, Party Games: Australian politicians and the media from war to dismissal (Melbourne, 2003), 23, where the ‘memo’ is said to have suggested ‘the HWT commission and publish its own public opinion polls.’ The valedictory volume to Murdoch frames Dunstan's work slightly differently. It was ‘through the imprimatur that he [Murdoch] put on the polls,’ it claims, ‘that they were accepted by leading newspapers in other states’; Herald & Weekly Times, Keith Murdoch, Journalist (Melbourne, [1952]), 33. 41 W. Dunstan, General Manager, Herald & Weekly Times, to Roy Morgan, 16 April 1940, Roy Morgan papers. Contrast Mills’ report that Morgan went to the US ‘[i]mmediately before the start of the Second World War’; The New Machine Men, 2. Although it was later claimed that Harry ‘helped organize’ or ‘launch’ the Australian poll, and perhaps did so, Field left the AIPO in 1939; for the claim, see Gordon M. Connelly, ‘Harry Hubert Field, 1897–1946’, International Journal of Opinion and Attitude Research, 1, 1947, p. 93 and [Lloyd A. Free] ‘Harry Hubert Field (1897–1946)’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 10 (3), 1946, p. 399. 42 Roy Morgan to Dr George Gallup, 2 February 1965, Roy Morgan papers. 43 George Gallup, A Guide to Public Opinion Polls (Princeton, 1944), 39. 44 Robinson, The Measure of Democracy, 66. 45 Roy Morgan Memo to George Gallup Jnr., 30 November 1960, Roy Morgan papers. However, Griffen-Foley's account of the process, according to which the ‘editors of the six subscribing newspapers… chose the questions,’ leaves Morgan out; Party Games, 24, 28. 46 Gallup, Reporting public opinion in five nations, 429; Gallup and Rae, The Pulse of Democracy, Appendix Two. 47 For BIPO's argument that the tie-up with the News Chronicle did not generate any ‘bias,’ see [Henry Durant] What Britain Thinks: the technique of public opinion measurement (London, 1939), 17–18. 48 McQueen, Media Monopolies, 62–66; Philip Hart, The piper and the tune, in: Cameron Hazelhurst (ed.), Australian Conservatism: essays in twentieth century political history (Canberra, 1979); A. W. Martin, Robert Menzies: a life, Vol. 1 1894–1943 (Carlton, Vic., 1993), 244, 247–248, 268; Anne Henderson, Enid Lyons: leading lady to a nation (North Melbourne, 2008), 156–157, 242–244; Ross Fitzgerald and Stephen Holt, Alan ‘The Red Fox’ Reid: pressman par excellence (Sydney, 2010), 21–22. 49 Some of his activity can be glimpsed in: Ian Hancock, National and Permanent? The Federal Organisation of the Liberal Party of Australia 1944–1965 (Carlton South, Vic., 2000), 54; Don Aitkin (ed.), The Howson Diaries (Ringwood, Vic. 1984), 54, 228, 235, 354–355; and Malcolm Fraser and Margaret Simons, Malcolm Fraser: the political memoirs (Carlton, Vic., 2010), 268. On agendas, compare Casey's reference to US polls on industry profits and the subsequent Morgan poll on the subject; R. G. Casey, Improved relations in industry are vital, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 November 1948, 2 and APOP, Nos. 579–589, published March–April 1949. 50 Michael Wheeler, Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics: the manipulation of public opinion in America (New York, 1976), 9, 41–42, 45, 47; David Moore, The Super Pollsters: how they measure and manipulate public opinion in America (New York, 1992), 304–305. For the view that Dewey always caved in to polls, see Sir Frederick Eggleston, Reflections of an Australian Liberal (Melbourne, 1953), 14. 51 Gallup and Rae, The Pulse of democracy, 149–152. That Gallup's polls were biased against labour unions is argued in Arthur Kornhauser, Are public opinion polls fair to organized labor? Public Opinion Quarterly 10(4) (1946), 484–500. 52 Report of Federal Executive to Federal Council, 27 September 1948, Box Y4639, Item 14, Records of the New South Wales Division of the Liberal Party of Australia, MSS 2385, Mitchell Library (ML) NSW; see also 1 September 1948, 93, Series 4, Vol. 10, Casey Family Papers, MS 6150, National Library of Australia (NLA). Morgan's research is referred to—mistakenly, but understandably—as a ‘Gallup Poll’; see also, Bridget Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations: the story of Australian commercial radio (Sydney, 2009), 497, n54. Morgan's market research was to be done through a separate entity (see below). 53 G. W. A. Duthie (Labor, Wilmot), Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Debates (House of Representatives), 15 September 1948, 421. 54 Michael Traugott, George Gallup, 1901–1984, in: Paul J. Lavrakas (ed.), Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods, Vol. 1 (Thousand Oaks, CA, 2008), 297. 55 Sarah E. Igo, The Averaged American: surveys, citizens, and the making of a mass public (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 117, mistakes this for a company run by Gallup. 56 See, Roy Morgan to Donald Longman, Dun & Bradstreet, 7 December 1949; Morgan, Replies to BETRO Questionnaire of 26 February 1948, 1; Morgan's entry submitted to Bradford's Survey and Directory of Marketing Research Agencies (4th edn) (New York, 1948–1949), Roy Morgan papers. For advertisements for Shell, see Herald, 3 March 1947, 11 and Sydney Morning Herald, 15 March 1947, 13. 57 Sylvia Ashby, The forties, in: W. A. McNair (ed.), Some Reflections on the First Fifty Years of Market Research in Australia 1928–1978 (Sydney, n.d.), 27; Murray Goot, Ashby, Sylvia Rose, in: John Ritchie (ed.), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 13, 1930–1980, A–De (Carlton, Vic., 1983), 77. 58 Gallup, A Guide to Public Opinion Polls, 45. 59 Australians asked 10 questions, Herald, 13 September 1941, 5 60 Opinion polls vital part of democracy, Herald, 28 July 1941, 7. 61 Gallup poll in Collingwood, Argus, 1 July 1941, 4 62 While the ads for interviewers in the press in the 1940s were invariably for women, in 1941 Morgan suggested to be interviewed by a woman would be the exception not the rule; Gallup poll men busy this week, Herald, 15 September 1941, 5. 63 Reveal public opinion trends in Australia, Sun, 11 September 1941. 64 ‘Gallup Poll’ for Australia, Daily Telegraph, 29 July 1941, 2; Public opinion poll begins next month, Daily Telegraph, 30 July 1941, 7. 65 In the absence of a clear statement from APOP, this inference is drawn from Gallup poll on London minister, Herald, 19 September 1941, 2. 66 Catherine A. Bradshaw, ‘America speaks,’ Journalism History, 31(4) (2006), 198; Britain Thinks, News Chronicle, 17 October 1938, 10. 67 See, for example, Australian Public Opinion Polls: the Gallup method (Melbourne, 1942), 16. 68 Herald, 9 May 1942, 7. See also Australian Gallup Polls ‘Australia Speaks’ Nos. 41/46, May, 1942. 69 Boyd, Anglophiles and Austericans, 82. 70 George H. Gallup (ed.), The Gallup Poll: public opinion 1935–1971, Volume One, 1935–1948 (New York, 1972), 278. 71 What Britain Thinks, 7; but cf. Anthony King (ed.), British Political Opinion 1937–2000: the Gallup poll (London, 2001), 2, who records voting intentions from 1943 only. 72 Poll shows slight swing to Labor, Herald, 2 June 1942, 6, and Little change to party followings since 1940, Herald, 20 February 1943, 5 73 Poll shows drift from main political parties, Herald, 3 June 1943, 4; Close federal election seems likely, Herald, 3 July 1943, 4. 74 Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935–1971, 228–229 75 Roy Morgan, Gallup poll shows trend of opinion, Herald, 20 August 1943, 5, and Gallup poll vote test, Herald, 28 August 1943, 5. Only the latter was distributed to subscribers to the APOP sheets of findings. 76 Poll shows slight swing to Labor, Herald, 2 June 1942, 6. 77 Gallup poll on pay for women, Herald, 16 September 1941, 6; Pay Equality for women favoured: result of Australia's first Gallup poll, Herald, 4 October 1941, 7; Australian Public Opinion Polls (The Gallup Method), History Is Being Written: poll findings announced during Oct. 1941 (Melbourne, 1941); Poll to test opinion, Sun (Sydney), 16 September 1941; Gallup, A Guide to Public Opinion Polls, 7. 78 Public opinion is not always wise, Herald, 3 December 1941, 3. 79 An armament for democracy, Herald, 11 October 1941, 4. 80 Australian Public Opinion Polls, 4, for both this and the preceding question. 81 Compare the complaint about polls in France ‘leaving out the “no answers”’; Pierre Bourdieu, Public opinion does not exist, in: Sociology in Question, trans. Richard Nice (London, 1971/1993), 151. 82 Gallup, Reporting public opinion in five nations, 430. 83 George H. Gallup (ed.), The Gallup Poll: public opinion 1935–1971 (New York, 1972). 84 Terence W. Beed et al., Australian Opinion Polls 1941–1977: an index (Sydney, 1978), 341. 85 Gallup, A Guide to Public Opinion Polls, 9. 86 The findings are reproduced in History is Being Written. For Boothby, see Fight for Boothby, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 May 1941, 9. 87 For publicity designed to encourage potential respondents, if not build anticipation in the Herald's readership, see: Gallup poll men busy this week, Herald, 15 September 1941, 5; Gallup poll on pay for women, Herald, 16 September 1941, 6; Gallup poll on price control, Herald, 17 September 1941, 6; How should we pay for the war? Herald, 18 September 1941, 8; and Gallup poll on London minister, Herald, 19 September 1941, 2. 88 Wheeler, Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics, 94, 280. 89 See, How Labor popularity has fluctuated, Herald, 19 November 1949, 2 and CP has good prospects, Herald, 5 November 1955, 2. Earlier, the paper had published a graph it would also have found gratifying showing an upward movement in the proportion of Americans believing the US would enter the War ‘sometime before it is over’; American opinion about the war, Herald, 1 July 1941, 7. 90 Thomas C. Leonard, News for All: America's coming of age with the press (New York, 1995), 221. For an example of a Gallup graph in the US, see Harold Mendelsohn and Irving Crespi, Polls, Television, and the New Politics (Scranton, Penn., 1970), 45; for Britain, see Survey shows steep fall in public approval, News Chronicle, 11 May 1940, 5. 91 Bradshaw, ‘America speaks,’ 203. 92 See the questionnaires reproduced, for the US, in: Igo, The Averaged American, 120; and for Britain, in: Durant, What Britain Thinks, 8. That the practice had disappeared, in Britain at least, by the early 1970s is suggested by the Gallup questionnaire reproduced in F. Teer and J. D. Spence, Political Opinion Polls (London, 1973), 212–215. 93 Bradshaw, ‘America speaks,’ 201. 94 For an Australian critique of the polls along these lines, see R. W. Connell, The voice of the people: a note on opinion surveys, Meanjin Quarterly, 31(2) (1972), 207–212. 95 See, Gallup poll on pay for women, Herald, 16 September 1941, 6. 96 Ibid; see also, History is Being Written, 3–4. 97 Survey shows 44 p.c. think Australia could liven up war effort, Sunday Telegraph, 12 October 1941, 5; reprinted, with Ashby's characteristic graphics, in: You, Me and This War (Sydney, 1941), 206–223. 98 Keith Murdoch, Journalist, 32–33. 99 See Penton's contribution to the discussion Must democracy's leaders be mediocre?, in: W. H. C. Eddy (ed.), Prospects of Democracy (Sydney, 1945), 96. For a very different view of the peace ballot, see R. G. Menzies, Post-war international relations, in: D. A. S. Campbell (ed.), Post-War Reconstruction in Australia (Sydney, 1944), 63–64. 100 Reaction to emotional strain, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 September 1939, Women's supplement, 9. There is a slightly inaccurate account in Valerie Lawson, Connie Sweetheart: the story of Connie Robertson (Port Melbourne, 1990), 230, 232. 101 Peace question put in Gallup poll, Herald, 26 June 1941, 1; Poll reveals output lag, Daily Telegraph, 8 July 1941, 1. 102 Tiger Wise, The Self-Made Anthropologist (Sydney, 1985), 148–149. See also, Jane Clunies Ross, A study of public opinion, Australian Quarterly XI(4) (1939), 43–52, and John Metcalfe, Mass observation and public opinion polls, Australian Quarterly XV(4) (1943), 52–67. 103 A. P. Elkin, Study of public opinion, Australian Journal of Science 5(1) (1942), 17. 104 A. P. Elkin, Our Opinions and the National Effort (Sydney, 1941). Graeme Davison's suggestion that this was commissioned by the Commonwealth Government is wrong; The social survey and the puzzle of Australian sociology, Australian Historical Studies, 34 (2003), 148. 105 Val Crowley, Community disunity, The Publicist, No. 67, January 1942, 3. 106 Wise, The Self-Made Anthropologist, 150–151. 107 Doorstop quiz, Smith's Weekly, 7 June 1941, 3. For the attribution retracted, in the wake of the Department's denial that it was conducting an opinion survey, see Doorstop quiz, Smith's Weekly, 14 June 1941, 3. 108 Plan to test public opinion, Daily Telegraph, 8 July 1941, 5 109 Survey begins next week, Herald, 30 August 1941, 7. See, Graeme Davison and John Lack, Panning the new social order: the Melbourne University Social survey, 1941–3, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 17(1) (1981). 110 Hills, Breaking News, 116 111 The idea that polls, and movements like Mass-Observation, gave voters’ voice was an even stronger theme in Britain where there had been no election since 1935 and Labour had not held office since 1931; see, Murray Goot, Mass-observation and modern public opinion research, in: Wolfgang Donsbach and Michael W. Traugott (eds), The Sage Handbook of Public Opinion Research (London, 2008), 99–101. 112 The phrase made famous by Gallup; see, Gallup and Rae, The Pulse of Democracy, 81. 113 Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: a guide to pseudo-events in America (New York, 1961/1978), 232–238. 114 D. M. Jones, Roy Morgan, the Gallup poll man, typescript of interview with Morgan, 1985, 9–10, Roy Morgan papers. 115 Christiansen cited in Hills, Breaking News, 149. 116 William Shawcross, Rupert Murdoch: ringmaster of the information circus (Sydney, 1992), 80. 117 George Munster, Rupert Murdoch: a paper prince (Ringwood, Vic., 1985), 36. 118 Inglis, The daily papers, 149–150. 119 Minutes of War Cabinet Meeting, Melbourne, 19 June 1940, NLA SP 195/1 3/1/1A. 120 Ian McLaine, Ministry of Morale (London, 1979), 84. 121 Ashby, The forties, 26–27. The view that the survey did not go ahead, suggested by Hilvert among others, is mistaken; see, John Hilvert, Blue Pencil Warriors: censorship and propaganda in World War II (St Lucia, Qld, 1984), 92, 95. 122 [John Thompson] (comp.) Alfred Conlon: a memorial by some of his friends (Sydney, 1963), 5–6. 123 Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Debates (House of Representatives), 14 November 1941, 441. Max Falstein (ALP, Watson), was part of the parliamentary party opposed to Curtin. Two days earlier, asked to comment on a Gallup poll which showed 50% in favour of ‘compulsory savings’ and ‘heavier taxes’ to pay for the war, the Treasurer, Ben Chifley, told R. S. Ryan (Flinders, UAP) he was ‘extremely doubtful that such polls have any value’; CPD (HoR), 12 November, 1941, 276–277. In 1948, under pressure from the Country Party and APOP over bank nationalisation, he remarked that ‘Surely this Parliament is not expected to pay attention to such an outside body’; CPD (HoR), 2 June 1948, 1559. 124 [Brian Penton] Australian people's morale, Daily Telegraph, 26 February 1942, 3; People ready to take—and give—more, Daily Telegraph, 27 February 1942, 3. 125 Michael McKernan, All In! (Melbourne, 1983), 129–131. In Melbourne, Lord Mayor Beaurepaire, someone who believed in the importance of the Gallup poll, also had a committee on morale; see, Gallup poll on lotteries suggested, Herald, 25 October 1941, 7 and Leonie Star, Julius Stone: an intellectual life (South Melbourne, 1983), 71. 126 Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Debates (Senate), 25 November 1948, 3497. 127 Zwar, In Search of Keith Murdoch, 110. For Murdoch in relation to the origins of the Australian–American Association, see Australian–American Association, History of the Australian–American Association (Melbourne, 1958), 11 and David S. Kent, A History of the Australian–American Association, History IV Honours Thesis, University of Sydney (Sydney, 1980), 47–49; and Origins of the Association, http://www.aaafed.asn.au/origins.htm, accessed 6 June 2010. Contrary to these sources, Murdoch was not Director-General of Information at the time the Movement was founded. 128 Public opinion polls: folly of trial Gallups, Smith's Weekly, 27 September 1941, 13. 129 See, for example, Australian Public Opinion Polls, 16. 130 Back-door quiz, Smith's Weekly, 23 August 1941, 3; Public opinion polls: folly of trial Gallups. 131 Gallup ‘polls,’ The Worker, 21 October 1941, 12. 132 E. C. Sommerlad, Mightier than the Sword: a handbook on journalism, broadcasting, propaganda, public relations and advertising (Sydney, 1950), 124. 133 The prostitution of democratic principles as practised by the ‘Herald’ in the ‘Gallop’ [sic] polls, East St Kilda Branch, A. L. P., 9 June 1942, emphasis in the original, and P. L. Nash, Secretary, East St Kilda Branch, Australian Labour Party to Senator R. V. Keane, 22 August 1942, Curtin papers, National Archives of Australia, M1415/1 134 Public opinion polls: folly of trial Gallups. 135 The prostitution of democratic principles as practised by the ‘Herald’ in the ‘Gallop’ [sic] polls. 136 Nash to Senator R. V. Keane, 22 August 1942, emphasis in the original. 137 The prostitution of democratic principles as practised by the ‘Herald’ in the ‘Gallop’ [sic] polls. 138 Carl Bridge, Casey and the Americans: Australian war propaganda in the United States, 1940–41 (London, 1988), 5, http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/01/51/32/WP30Bridge.pdf, accessed 13 March 2010; also in Carl Bridge (ed.), A Delicate Mission: the Washington diaries of R.G. Casey, 1940–42 (Canberra, 2008), 50, with Casey's emphasis omitted. For a similar attack on answers to poll questions ‘often without any real preliminary consideration of them,’ see the philosopher John Passmore's contribution to the discussion: Must democracy's leaders be mediocre?, in: Eddy (ed.), Prospects of Democracy, 92, and, from the Director of the Associated Chambers of Manufacturers of Australia, Pitfalls seen in reliance on Gallup polls, Canberra Times, 1 July 1948, 4 139 Patriots all!, The Publicist, No. 67, January 1942, 16–17. 140 The prostitution of democratic principles as practised by the ‘Herald’ in the ‘Gallop’ [sic] polls. 141 Nash to Senator R. V. Keane, 22 August 1942, emphasis in the original. 142 R. V. Keane to Curtin, 10 September 1942, Curtin papers, National Archives of Australia M1415/1. 143 Miles Franklin to Arnold Dresden, 15 November 1948, ML MSS 364/35 171 144 Franklin to Leonora Pease, 16 November 1948, ML MSS 364/13 157. 145 Boyd, Anglophiles and Austericans, 83. 146 R. B. Walker, Yesterday's News, 200. 147 P. J. M. Why this Gallup idiocrasy?, Century, 23 January 1942, 6. 148 Quoted frequently; see, for example, Graham Freudenberg, Churchill and Australia (Sydney, 2008), 341. 149 Australian Gallup Polls ‘Australia Speaks’—Nos. 153–161. Published October 1943; Origins of the Association, 1. 150 Richard White, ‘Combating cultural aggression’: Australian opposition to Americanisation, Meanjin 39(3) (1980), 281. 151 John Hammond Moore, Over-Sexed, Over-Paid and Over-Here: Americans in Australia 1941–1945 (St Lucia, Qld, 1981). 152 On chewing gum, see E. Daniel Potts and Annette Potts, Yanks Down Under 1941–45: the American impact on Australia (Melbourne, 1985), 320; and Anthony J. Baker and Lisa Jackson, Fleeting Attraction: a social history of American servicemen in Western Australia during the Second World War (Nedlands, WA, 1996), 120. 153 [P. R. Stephensen] Mental Rubbish from Overseas: a public protest, Pamphlet No. 1 (Sydney, 1935). 154 Poll to test opinion, Sun, 16 September 1941, 4. 155 Richard Waterhouse, Popular culture, in: Philip Bell and Roger Bell (eds), Americanization and Australia (Sydney, 1998), 56. 156 The close association between Gallup and the United States Information Service is partly documented in Armand Mattelart, Multinational Corporations and the Control of Culture: the ideological apparatuses of imperialism (Brighton, Sussex, 1976, trans. 1979), 240–244, 302; see also Herbert I Schiller, The Mind Managers (Boston, 1974), 46, 108, 114, 166. 157 See, Murray Goot and Rodney Tiffen, Public opinion and the politics of the polls, in: Peter King (ed.), Australia's Vietnam (Sydney, 1983), 133–135. In Prue Torney-Parlicki, Behind the News: a biography of Peter Russo (Crawley, WA, 2005), 311–313, the explanation of Morgan's polling offered by Gary Morgan is misleading. Far from following Gallup's formulation of a question to do with the war, Morgan defied him; Roy Morgan to George Gallup, 2 November 1967, Roy Morgan papers. 158 Bigger Vote For Liberals If Menzies Not Leader? Herald, 13 August 1947, 10. For the correspondence, see Menzies to Murdoch, 5 September 1947; Murdoch to Menzies, 8 September 1947; Menzies to Murdoch, 16 September 1947; and Morgan to Murdoch, 18 September 19, MS 2823/1/6, NLA. For a discussion, see Griffen-Foley, Party Games, 25–29. 159 Murray Goot and R. W. Connell, Presidential Politics in Australia?, Australian Quarterly, 44(2) (1972), 28–33. Compare the argument, surely a non sequitur, that ‘it's n