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July 11, 2005

Show Us Your Preconceptions!

I was digging in some old (15th-century) British archives, and I found this. I think it was written by a noble of Saxon descent, about the Norman rabble:

It be known that whyle mofte peoples of Saxon bloode partake of news of ye worlde from the Duke's official Towne Cryere - whose cryes be vetted by the Duke, the Bifhoppe and a counsel of Knigghets - mofte of ye Norman peoples getteth the news of the daye from ye broadsheets spatte forthe from the Guttenberge Prefse, knowne to the Saxones as "they who sitteth in the bafement in their bedclothes" writting commentary critical of thofe of noble birth".

But now comes to us worde that people who getteth their newes from the Prefse of Guttenburge are miftaken about great swathes of their information, as compared to thofe who gette their newes from the Cryer.

Afked were a thousand of the peasants four queftions:

  1. "Be the worlde flatte?
  2. Be there dragons beyond the Northe Sea?
  3. Do the Jewes and the Saracens consume the fleshe of infants?
  4. Can Golde be made from Lead?
Intereftingly, thofe who obtaineth their newes from the Guttenburge presse were miftaken; 80% of Guttenburghe Prefse readers believeth the earthe be rounde (!), that beyond the Northe Seae be there more sea, that Jewes and Saracens treated infantes with the same tendernesse as did the peoples of Christendom that Leade can not be turned by a trained Alchemiste to Golde!Further proof, were any needed, of the efpecial intelligence of the Saxon people and their cryer newes service!
[1]
Wow. Those Normans were sure stupid!

The left, after the election, was looking for any bit of good news it could find. Among the things they latched onto were a couple of reports, surveys and other trifles purporting to show, in various ways, that Democrats were just plain smarter, better-informed and nicer than Republicans. It was an orgy of self-adulation like none I've ever seen.

And at the top of the list was a study claiming that people who got their news from Fox were less well-informed than people who got their news from the major media or PBS.

Which brings up two questions:

  • By what criteria was this conclusion reached?
  • What if the same idea were turned around?
Let's look.

The study notes that...

by providing more fine-grained response options it became clearer that only about one in five Americans believed that Iraq was directly involved in 9/11, but that a majority did believe that Iraq had given substantial support to al-Qaeda—both propositions unsupported by the US intelligence community. [An obtuse point - as we'll show, later on - Ed.] Other polls found even higher numbers responding positively to the idea that Iraq was involved in September 11 or had some type of close involvement with al-Qaeda. These perceptions of Iraq’s involvement with al-Qaeda and 9/11 persisted largely unchanged in numerous PIPA/KN polls through September 2003, despite continued disconfirmation by the intelligence community. More striking, in PIPA/KN polls conducted after the war--in May, July, and August- September--approximately half of the respondents expressed the belief that the US has actually found evidence in Iraq that actually found evidence in Iraq thatSaddam was working closely with al-Qaeda. While administration figures have talked about a purported meeting in Prague between an al-Qaeda member and an Iraqi official, this does not constitute evidence that Saddam was working closely with al-Qaeda and, in any case, this purported meeting had been discredited by the US intelligence community during the period of these polls [Unmentioned: Other meetings betwen Iraqis and Al Quaeda - of which more later - Ed.].
Note that the pattern in the survey is set from the very beginning: People who agree with the mainstream media's seven-second sound bite "conventional wisdom" on the survey questions are considered "well-informed". Everyone who doesn't hew strictly to the preconceived notion of "well-informed", for whatever reason, is not.

It's, shall we say (and as we'll show later), an oversimplification.

The survey asked the following questions:

  1. Did the respondent believe that there were links between Iraq and Al-Quaeda
  2. Saddam Hussein's purported links to 9/11
  3. Belief (after the war) that there were WMDs in Iraq
  4. WMDs were used during the war.
  5. Percent that believed the world backed our going to war
  6. Perceptions of European public opinion on the war.
The beef of the survey - for purposes of proving the left's own surpassing intelligence - came in the conclusions where the survey keyed on three "Key Perception Questions":
  • Evidence of links between Iraq and Al-Quaeda. According to the survey, people who got their news from Fox had a 67% "misperception" rate, while those who got their news from PBS 16% had a "misperception" rate.

    However, the result is misleading to the point of meaninglessness because the question is narrow to the point of vanishing: "Is it your impression that the US has or has not found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Ussein was working closely with the al-Quaeda terrorist organization". The question is worthless for a number of reasons:

    • The study didn't control for people who conflate "Al Quaeda" with "Terrorist groups in general".
    • That lack of control betrays an irrational condition placed on the debate by the left, who seem to focus their entire effort on Al-Quaeda, rather than on terrorism as a broader issue, including groups such as Hamas, Hezb-e-Islamiya, Abu Sayyaf, Chechen groups and the dizzying, decentralized mass of terror organizations that may not be Al Quaeda, but whose goals are allied.
    • The study accepted the "Seven Second Soundbite" version of the assertion that there was "no connection between Al Quaeda and Iraq", even though nobody (least of all the 9/11 Commission) has made that categorial assertion. The jury is, to say the least, still out, at least outside the Big Three, PBS and the major print media.
    • The study didn't control for coverage of non-Al Quaeda groups believed to be linked to Iraq. Abu Nidal, Carlos the Jackal and other terrorists flocked to Baghdad before the war. Terrorist training centers (including a hijack-training center at Salman Pak) existed; presumably for a reason. Were these centers covered on non-Fox outlets? To what extent? With what level of neutrality and completeness? The study didn't control for this, but the presence of such coverage on Fox (and its absence on the more-mainstream left-leaning outlets) could certainly account for the difference, without being ascribable to being "misinformed".

  • Weapons of Mass Destruction: The survey's question: "Since the war with Iraq ended, is it your impression that the US has or has not found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?" The study claimed that Fox viewers were "misinformed" 33% of the time, while PBS/NPR were wrong 11% of the time. Again, the survey doesn't seem to have controlled for the fact that weapons of mass destruction were found during the war, albeit not in large amounts, and that plans, training facilities and evidence of support and peripheral operations were discovered. The study doesn't control for how much WMD the viewer perceived; a few Sarin and Mustard Gas shells are, indeed, "Weapons of Mass Destruction". But to the study, it's all or nothing, no ranges of outcomes. The study also fails to control for people who conflated Iraq's proven record of using poison gas against the Kurds, for example, or the respective networks coverage (or lack of it) of Iraq's history of chemical warfare. As far as the study (and especially the commentators who chortled over it) is concerned, either you believe in contravention of all evidence that Iraq was a huge WMD stockpile, or you believe it never was, Winston. No gray area allowed - which makes for nice sound bites, but it's not the way the world, or human perceptions, or this issue in particular works.

  • World Public Opinion: Question: "Thinking about how all the people in the world feel abou5t the US having gone to war with Iraq, do you think: The majority of people favor the US having gone to war". Fox viewers were charged with being "misinformed" 35% of the time, PBS-NPR consumers 5% of the time (which, given that only 40 people from the sample of 1,362 actually listed PBS as a primary source, means two people from the Public Broadcasting audience). Leaving aside accusations of political bias on the part of Gallup, the coverage of the study tends to leave out this bit: "In April-May Gallup International asked “Now that the regime of Saddam Hussein has been destroyed, do think that military action by the US and its allies was justified or not justified?” Here responses were a bit more mixed. In 27 of the 43 (11 out of 21 in Europe) countries polled the majority said military action was not justified, while in seven countries (three in Europe) the majority said that it was. (Some respondents may have felt the war was justified, but still opposed the US taking such action without UN approval.)" The survey failed to control for the American viewers' attitudes about foreign opinion and its importance as against, say, the United States' rights as a sovereign nation, or the relative level of coverage of foreign opinion on the war (which, at least as far as Public Broadcasting is concerned, always seemed to me to be unanimously anti-war, even when covering countries where the US intervention was modestly popular).
So, in the absence of any control for things like gray area or perceptions that don't fit neatly into the black-or-white categories sought by the survey, I don't think it's a huge stretch to label this study either "deeply flawed" (given the gross oversimplification of the perceptions involved) or "a push poll" (given that all shades of disagreement with the black or white premise presented as the threshold for being "properly informed" were lumped under the negative "misinformed" category, even though the positive "informed" categories were, as shown above, themselves misleading.

By the way, let's talk about the actual numbers in this study, which (as mentioned above) covered 1,362 people:

Primary News Source
Two or more networks........ 30%
Fox .........................................18%
CNN.......................................16%
NBC .......................................14%
ABC .......................................11%
CBS..........................................9%
PBS-NPR .................................3%
In terms of actual numbers, that breaks down as follows:

Two or more networks........ 408
Fox .........................................245
CNN.......................................217
NBC .......................................190
ABC .......................................149
CBS..........................................122
PBS-NPR .................................40

These numbers, especially the PBS slice, are ludicrously small.

But in response, I think it'd be interesting to put out a responsive survey of peoples' attitudes sorted by their primary news source, with a different set of assumptions.

The questions:

  1. Do you believe that no connection between terror groups (including but not limited to Al Quaeda) and Saddam Hussein has been discovered?
  2. Do you believe that the Administration has never listed anything but Weapons of Mass Destruction as the grounds for going to war?
  3. Do you believe that this war is all about Al Quaeda, as opposed to a broader war on terror?
  4. What portion of Iraq, expressed as a percentage, is currently experiencing significant terrorist activity?
  5. Do you believe that the war on terror (as a broad action, not the actions in Afghanistan, Iraq or any singular operation) is having no effect on terrorists' activities in the West?
  6. Do you believe that the Sunni have seceded from the new Iraqi democracy?
  7. Do you believe that fighting terror involves police work, as opposed to making host nations like Afghanistan and Iraq untenable to terrorists?
How do you suppose PBS viewers will rate?

Suppose the test subjects will complain about the unstated assumptions behind the test?

Wouldn't that be ironic?

[1] No, not really. The English dox are actually satiric in intent. Deal with it.

Posted by Mitch at July 11, 2005 06:35 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Can't you picture the contributors coming home after dotting the last i on this scholarly work. "How was your day, honey?" "We finally finished that comprehensive study on a number of misconceptions held by the public, especially those who watch Fox News." "That's wonderful, dear. I sure hope someone reads it."

My comment: "Like this matters!" Especially on how the world sees us, especially Europe. And as for the other three points, their "clear" answers are not certain enough even now to gamble on Saddam's role in and support of Islamic terror.

And I always love the "as we now know" logic about the missing WMD. Q: How do we know? A. Because we went in and looked, and it took an invasion to do that. Until then, everyone in the world thought otherwise, and may still be right.

FYI, notice that CBS was usually second to FOX in promoting all those misconceptions. How can this be? Should be just the opposite, right?

Posted by: R-Five at July 11, 2005 09:47 PM

Fox News watchers also believe that low rates of STD and HIV infection in a population, correlate to the adherence to monogamy in that population. How intolerant of them.

Posted by: RBMN at July 11, 2005 10:37 PM

Well, Mitch, as a long time NPR/PBS junkie I rise to your challenge!

1. Connections between Husein and terrorist groups have been long standing, including evidence of a "hijacking school". This begs the question, however: there is a difference in the level of threat from terrorists who are mere proxies for national policy (the sort favored by Bathist regimes, which can and are influenced/controlled by national states), terrorists who are principally fighting to eject "crusaider influence" from the Middle East (Hammas), and those actively seeking to destroy western power and kill boatloads of civilians (Saudi and Moslem Brotherhood influenced). Let's go after that last category first. Yes, there is some intermixing, but its a numbers game: 100 Al Quaida terrorists are a bigger threat to the U.S. then, say 100 of just about any other brand of terrorist who just wants us out of their backyard or who measure their influence by headlines and column inches in the New York Times (oh, wait, Arafat's dead).

2. Other reasons were listed as well, such as humanitarian. Personally, I've never had a problem with the WMD argument, even without evidence the history was just too strong. The unasked question, however, is how each argument was weighted in the decision to attack. Just on sheer humanitarian grounds a strong case can be made for invading the Central African Republic or whatever name the former Congo goes by nowadays. Oh, of course it was about Oil, but what's wrong with looking out for a vital national resource? For the record, btw, I supportted the war on Iraq. Penning the recovery plan on the back of a hotel bar napkin, however, is just criminal, as is the rampant squandering of money on inept and corrupt contracts. I thought you were a bang for the buck guy, Mitch?

3. Al Quaeda was just the lever. The broad sweep is to play "snow globe" with the whole region and hope the little bits of plastic white stuff fall where we think they'll be the prettiest. Hey, the French and the British had their turn in the Muddle East, drawing pretty lines in crayon on a blank map of the region. We get to color it in! WHAT FUN!

4. Since the Sunnis represent 20% of Iraq, I'd guess around 25%

5. Of course the war on terror has prevented numerous attacks, but I think you're asking the wrong question here, and perhaps deliberately. My counter-argument as a liberal is to draw an analogy: if your goal is to hammer nails, you should aim for the nail and try to avoid the window pane two inches to the right.

6. They tried at first. Now they're scrambling to get back in, but not everyone has gotten the message, especially those in the far west and along the borders where there has never been effective control even under Sadam.

7. I believe in both, but since you're forcing me to choose one over the other, well, I suppose the British should take Scotland Yard off the case and just call random airstrikes on the poorer neighborhoods in London where the Arab population is most concentrated. Of course I'm being absurb: so are you, but you're hiding it better.

Posted by: Bill Haverberg at July 11, 2005 11:28 PM

I'm still getting over the fact that the English documents cited weren't real. That would have been brilliant.

Cheers!

Posted by: Naked at July 12, 2005 06:31 AM

"I'm still getting over the fact that the English documents cited weren't real."

We may, in fact, at this time, be unable to unauthenticate the documents Mitch has presented; but what they purport to contain are consistent with the recollections of Saxons who lived at the time. Therefore, it is permissable to use them as a basis of a 60-Minutes II story.

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Posted by: Galen at October 30, 2006 05:51 AM
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