ATLANTA  For Strategic Vision L.L.C., as for many polling companies, it was a regular practice: for five years the company sent out the results of its surveys on leading political races around the country, and they made their way into blog posts, articles and national television coverage.

But news organizations are rethinking their use of Strategic Vision’s numbers after the company was reprimanded last week by a professional association of pollsters for failing to disclose “essential facts” about its methods.

The reprimand has hit a nerve among those in the political world who feed on poll numbers, prompting intense scrutiny of everything from the distribution of digits in the company’s poll results to its claim that it is based in Atlanta. Nate Silver, a statistical analyst who writes FiveThirtyEight, a blog on polling, has suggested in a series of posts that the company’s data may well be fabricated, an assertion denied by David E. Johnson, the founder and chief executive of Strategic Vision.

“We expect to be fully vindicated,” Mr. Johnson said in a telephone interview this week.

But the controversy has also led to a critical examination of the indiscriminate use of poll numbers. Strategic Vision’s polls have been cited by numerous news organizations, including The Associated Press, The Washington Post, MSNBC, Fox News and, on at least three occasions, The New York Times, even though the company has repeatedly failed to provide supporting data and the methodology for its surveys. (The Times generally avoids using national and state polls that do not meet its standards.)