From WNYKRZE in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone.

The story dominating the news this week was the legal wrangling over the feeding tube that sustains the life of Terry Shivo.

The medical consensus is that she's existed for 15 years in a persistent vegetative state.

After a series of court battles nearly as long and the intervention of Congress and the president

intended to clear the way for more appeals,

the legal consensus is that her husband

should be the one to decide whether to remove that lifeline.

Much of the coverage served up an image of a nation sharply and more or less

evenly divided. Demonstrators here at the hospice where I'm standing, they have been increasingly

more and more passionate, as Terry Schiavo has become more and more dehydrated, and they are

passionately arguing their positions. I think that the radical right has hijacked this issue and exploited this woman.

Let's be honest here.

You have a woman behind us who is being starved to death and...

Tape like that and the abundant coverage of protests offered a range of views,

but it also presented a misleading picture of where the public stood,

choosing in many cases the appearance

of balance over accuracy. And this bothered Eric Bolert, who's been watching the polls and

covering the coverage for Salon.com. Well, I think originally when the story first became

national a week ago Friday, I looked at the coverage Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the television coverage,

virtually no mention of polls. And there were very recent polls at that point by ABC and Fox,

...