ABCS SELECTIVE REPORTING OF LATEST BAD NEWS FOR BUSH POLL
MOST SAY IRAQ WAR HAS AIDED U.S. SECURITY AND AGREE WITH NSA SURVEILLANCE OF TERRORISTS, BUT ABC WONT SAY SO ON TELEVISION
Published: 3/7/2006 1:00 AM ET
MOST SAY IRAQ WAR HAS AIDED U.S. SECURITY AND AGREE WITH NSA SURVEILLANCE OF TERRORISTS, BUT ABC WONT SAY SO ON TELEVISION
ABCS SELECTIVE
REPORTING OF LATEST
BAD NEWS FOR BUSH POLL
Just a week after ABC, NBC, MSNBC and CNN put aside their competitive instincts and heavily touted a CBS News poll showing the President with an all-time low approval rating (after the pollsters contacted many Democrats and relatively few Republicans), ABC is showing a different kind of polling bias: Trumpeting just the findings that assist the administrations liberal critics.
Mondays World News Tonight and Tuesdays Good Morning America both headlined with how 80 percent pessimistically believe civil war is likely in Iraq. But isnt an opinion ABC has been pushing on viewers? On February 24, Good Morning Americas Charles Gibson fretted about grave concerns about civil war, and World News Tonight co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas insisting on March 1 that Iraq was dangerously close to civil war.
As for President Bushs approval rating, ABC found it essentially unchanged since its last poll in January (41% approval now, 42% approval back then). So on last nights World News Tonight, Vargas and George Stephanopoulos just ignored that number, seven points higher than the 34% all-time low in the CBS poll that every network embraced last week.
On this mornings Good Morning America, however, co-host Robin Roberts claimed that ABCs new poll had found President Bushs job approval rating has sunk to a new career low. But isnt he much more popular than ABC said he was last week?
Some of what ABC News didnt tell TV viewers: Their poll found a majority (54%) said it was okay that the National Security Agency is secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails between some people in the United States and other countries, without first getting court approval to do so. Didnt ABC tout that as a major scandal?
And, according to ABCs poll, half of the public (50%) agrees that the war with Iraq has contributed to the long-term security of the United States, vs. 48% who say it has not. And, 62% said they favored how after 9/11 FBI was given additional authority in areas like surveillance, wiretaps and obtaining records in terrorism investigations.
But you didnt hear that news if you watched ABC last night or this morning.
See Also:
TV Tries to Sink Bush with Weighted Poll
and
ABC & WPost Skip How Poll Finds Majority Support for
Surveillance
