What Media Bias?

The poll in Iraq.Here is Zogby's take. Here (in PDF form)are the actual questions, their answers and methodology.Here is how Zogby's website describes its own poll of the Iraqi people:

Iraq: better than you think

No matter what one might hear on the evening news, there is good news in Iraq. This week, the American Enterprise magazine and Zogby International released a poll of Iraqis that shows "seven out of 10 say they expect their country and their personal lives will be better five years from now."

Even more promising, as the American Enterprise reports, is that when "asked to name one country they would most like Iraq to model its new government on ... the most popular model by far was the U.S."

Sixty percent of Iraqis said they don't want an Islamic government. The overwhelming optimism and pro-American sentiment of Iraqis expose the discrepancy between the reality of the situation and the doomsday reports coming from most news outlets.

The survey reinforces the need for America to stay the course in Iraq.

The actual poll answers are optimistic, and the media is not reporting them. The media wants the world to believe that the US has blundered into a disaster, and that it desperately needs help to avoid "another Vietnam."

Here is how the Financial Times describes the same poll. And this is the story that the left believes:

Iraqis Do Not Trust Americans, Says Poll
by Guy Dinmore, Financial Times/UK
September 11th, 2003

Braving bullets, arrests and hot pursuit while carrying out the first scientific survey of Iraqi public opinion, pollsters commissioned by a conservative US think-tank have discovered that most Iraqis do not trust Americans and want to be left alone.

John Zogby, president of Zogby International which completed the poll last month, summed up the findings on Wednesday, saying that, like most Arabs, Iraqis want to "control their own destiny", without the intervention of outside forces, and are confident in their own ability.

"Now that tyranny is over," he said, "it is time to move forward but not as a colony."

And it only gets worse from there.

They even cherry pick Zogby's quotes. Shameful.

The New York Times would be capable of running a similar or even more extensive poll. But they do not. They do not mention the Zogby poll at all. Instead, they report from the most disgruntled region in Iraq, and they claim to know what all Iraqis think:

As the occupation enters its sixth month, however, (Iraqis) are looking for something, anything, they can hold in their hands that assures them that the future will be better — and they cannot find it.

The poll said the opposite. Who is trying to be scientific here?

In fact, here is the New York Times' own correspondent, describing his personal truce with the terror of the Hussien regime:

There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the approbation of the people who governed their lives. This was the ministry of information, and particularly the director of the ministry. By taking him out for long candlelit dinners, plying him with sweet cakes, plying him with mobile phones at $600 each for members of his family, and giving bribes of thousands of dollars. Senior members of the information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who then behaved as if they were in Belgium. They never mentioned the function of minders. Never mentioned terror.

And they've never had any desire to find out what Iraqis think either.

This is the most important foreign policy venture that the US has undertaken since Korea. And it is in danger of being damaged not in Iraq but in the US - by petty minded, unelected journalists who resent the US and its president. They have no plan other than encouraging chaos because it makes for good news, and they don't care if the world goes to hell in the process.


- posted by total @ 9/15/2003 12:50:00 PM .