The Sexiest, Most Powerful Column Is Here

People were still voting when this column went to press, but regardless of the ultimate outcome from Tuesday’s balloting, here’s a certainty: Some of those preelection polls were inaccurate.

The United States--or at least its media--loves anything that provides hard numbers to analyze endlessly. No wonder the countdown to Tuesday’s election featured as much discussion of polling numbers as of policy.

Of course, unless they contact every interested party, no poll can completely avoid that pesky “margin of error” disclaimer. Even Nielsen Media Research, which estimates the TV viewing habits of 101 million U.S. households and 262 million people based on meters in a few thousand homes, is precisely that--an estimate--something rarely noted as newspapers, magazines and TV shows dutifully report its findings.

Still, there’s good reason for companies to rely on Nielsen data, since an entire industry--worth billions of dollars--is predicated on those projections, and planting a chip in every TV viewer’s skull isn’t yet practical. What’s hard to fathom, however, is the preoccupation with quantifying and ordering that which can’t possibly be quantified and ordered--to fabricate lists and polls that are also dutifully reported though most of the results are patently absurd.

Specifically, consider the media’s fondness for assembling “power lists” and conducting online polls that have absolutely no statistical validity whatsoever. And even more ludicrously, people with real jobs actually pay attention to these things--lobbying for placement and complaining about the conclusions.

A case in point would be Entertainment Weekly’s latest “Power List,” which mixes and matches the likes of CBS Television President Leslie Moonves and director Steven Spielberg with Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise.

Given that this amounts to comparing apples and oranges, it’s to be expected that the list offers several unintentionally hilarious juxtapositions. These include putting Britney Spears ahead of “Star Wars” patriarch George Lucas, and MTV’s Carson Daly--the sort of dime-a-dozen Ken doll who could be a cultural afterthought by this time next week--before the World Wrestling Federation’s Vince McMahon, who presides over a billion-dollar entertainment empire.

Then again, the list-makers also fail to disclose the cynical calculation that undoubtedly goes into such a process--that playing CBS’ lap dog, for instance, might facilitate getting a cover-conscious magazine on the set of the network’s upcoming “Survivor” sequel.

Obviously, the hope is that these undertakings will sell magazines, and it’s hard to argue with crass commercialism. Yet in an article by The Times’ Claudia Eller last year about the insanity that surrounds such power lists, EW assistant managing editor Maggie Murphy was quoted as saying, “I love that something Entertainment Weekly has done becomes the dominant topic of conversation” in Hollywood.

Well, yes, except that many people are talking about what a bunch of pandering bozos you are. EW could also gain attention by naming Saddam Hussein entertainer of the year, proclaiming “Howard the Duck” the greatest movie of all time or having its top management walk down the street in chicken suits, but to what purpose?

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Another recent example of numbers-obsessed idiocy comes from a sister Time Warner publication, People magazine, which conducted an Internet poll to let readers select the “10 sexiest men alive.”

Unfortunately for People, fans pining for the CBS “reality” series “Big Brother” (yes, such a group really exists) decided this would be a great way to generate publicity for contestants Josh Souza and Eddie McGee. So they flooded People with votes for the duo, who finished No. 1 and 2, respectively--ahead of such luminaries as singer Billy Ray Cyrus and actor Russell Crowe.

Earnest Matthews, a self-proclaimed reality-programming addict in Kansas City, Kan., said Souza’s online marching band got the word out via a handful of “Big Brother” Internet message boards.

“I was shocked at how easy it was,” he said.

Jeff Oswald, a North Carolina freelance videographer, sees the stunt as just another demonstration of the media’s stupidity. Oswald, who organized a campaign called Media Jammers to nettle the producers of “Big Brother”--flying banners over the Studio City house where the show’s 10 lab rats were isolated--said the results have inspired him to take on a new project: trying, as he put it, “to manipulate and see if we can make a mockery of every online poll I can find.”

“Big Brother” fans should be familiar with shoddy online polling, since CBS and America Online presented meaningless popularity results--fans of a particular inmate could vote again and again--as if they possessed some legitimacy. Indeed, the giddy participation of the program’s host, CBS News’ Julie Chen, in this nonsense helps explain why Oswald’s Web site, https://www.mediajammers.org, refers to her as a “disgraced former journalist.” Oswald even tried to influence the People poll, urging the site’s visitors to vote for him “early and often.”

OK, it’s an unusual hobby, but the point being made here is valid. Such bastardized “polls”--either employing call-in or online procedures--highlight the peril in which news outlets place their reputations by dabbling in such unreliable data. In an age when many people already profess to lack trust in the media, why go out of the way to undermine credibility further and provide folks less reason to believe what it is you’re telling them?

Asked about “Big Brother” fans’ manipulation of his magazine’s poll, a People spokesman sheepishly said he would get an official comment, then failed to call back. Now that’s a fine way to treat--if readers are wondering what to get a humble columnist for Christmas--next year’s “sexiest man alive.”

Despite these embarrassments, such pointless exercises will only proliferate, simply because the technology exists and companies can occasionally make a buck off of them. In similar fashion, inane lists--power or otherwise--won’t disappear any time soon either.

The presidential election may be over, but when it comes to the media’s silly campaigning to generate buzz and excesses related to show-business egos, it’s 100% certain that the polls never close.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears on Wednesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.