Anyone who reads this blog with any regularity knows that I am not a fan of polls and polling in general and that I take all pol results with a grain of salt roughly the size of Detroit. Still, every once in a while a polls results are so overwhelming that it's hard not to notice. So it is today with a new poll released by Fox News. There are a couple of issues where the results are astonishingly lopsided.
The poll shows there is strong support for the Treasury Department program tracking financial transactions in search of terrorist funding. Seven of 10 Americans support the program, including majorities of Republicans (83 percent), independents (67 percent) and Democrats (58 percent).
The Bush administration asked the New York Times not to publish information about the secret program, but the newspaper went ahead because it felt it was in the public interest to do so. By publishing the story, a 60 percent majority thinks the Times did more to help terrorist groups than the public (27 percent).
More Americans blame government employees for leaking the classified info (51 percent) than the media for reporting it (28 percent).
Furthermore, almost all (87 percent) think the employees who leaked should face criminal charges and two-thirds think the news organizations should. Even so, only 43 percent are willing to call what the media did treason, and almost as many think the organizations that published the information were operating for the public good (37 percent).
Overall, by 40 percent to 25 percent, Americans trust news reporters more to tell the truth than government officials, with 26 percent saying “neither.” These results are in line with polling conducted last summer: 38 percent said they trust news reporters more, 18 percent government officials and 33 percent neither (June 2005).
The New York Times, the leaker(s), Bill Keller and Pinch Sulzberger appear to have made a gross miscalculation in deciding to publish this story. If I were one of the leakers, I'd be thinking really, really hard about relocating to Brazil. I think they still don't have an extradition agreement with the US.
Predictions: Keller out of a job by the end of summer, Sulzberger kicked to the curb at the next shareholder's meeting.
So this poll is not flawed?
I mean, a republican news channel presenting a poll result that supports the republicans is correct, while all the others, that don’t support the republicans are incorrect?
No, I think you should stick with your original opinion, and disregard this one too. I have seen too much “overwhelming” support polls.
For example in Belorussia….
Roland, Fox isn’t “Republican”. I know the lefties like to say that. But researchers a while back determined that Fox is actually closer to middle ground. They just look right compared to all the rest.
Results like this are usually pointing to something important. Note that the attitudes on the press versus politicians is steady from earlier poll results.
Not republican? Then sorry, I was misinformed.
I know that Karl Rove requested his TV-set tuned to Fox News, and I’ve read that Fox News is republican.
If not, then it’s my bad.
Bad intel
And as for the results of the poll and my remarks, I was just teasing you,
mostly because I find the remarks of Churchill good ones, and your general stance about polls were ringing one of his about statistics : “I will believe only to statistics I made up”, or something like that, I know it only in hungarian
I pay attention to polls. They tell you a lot, even when they are biased.
Or, when they are, maybe more
I can’t remember who did that study. I think Brit Hume has probably the best newscast in the US right now. It’s very fair. I can’t watch it lately because of my schedule.