If a Military Times poll falls in a forest…

January 2, 2007

Following up on an item from the weekend, the Military Times newspapers published a massive new poll after questioning 6,000 randomly selected active-duty members of the Armed Forces. The results ran counter to much of the conventional wisdom — barely one in three service members approve of the way the president is handling the war; a majority believe it was wrong to go into Iraq in the first place; and a plurality reject the notion of sending additional troops into the war.

For reasons that are unclear, the media seems to have missed the poll entirely.

Greg Sargent noted on Saturday the dearth of news coverage of this story, and I followed up this morning by doing a Nexis search to see just how many outlets reported on the story. Given the results of the poll and the importance of the troops’ opinions, I was surprised at just how little coverage the Military Times survey received.

In terms of newspapers, the San Jose Mercury News and the Seattle Times were the only U.S. papers to run stories of their own. Reuters and UPI mentioned the poll in wire stories, which were not widely picked up. That’s it. That’s all the print coverage the poll received.

Broadcast outlets were a bit better, with CNN and ABC mentioning the poll on the air, but that’s still not exactly widespread coverage.

It’s common for outlets to downplay poll results from rival news sources; papers and networks don’t want to give free publicity to competing news organizations. I get that. But the Military Times newspapers aren’t rivals to the major dailies. So why not mention a poll that highlights the fact that many troops disapprove of Bush, don’t support an escalation, don’t see Iraq as part of the war on terror, and don’t believe that success in Iraq is likely?

It sounds kind of newsworthy.

“It sounds kind of newsworthy.”

But reality has a known liberal bias! Nope, there are far too many politicans with a documented statement that they have antedotial evidence that the troops support the war and the president to allow mere empirical science to contradict them.

  • For reasons that are unclear, the media seems to have missed….

    I’d have thought the major reasons entirely clear. As many readers of TCR have pointed out, the media are now entirely under the direction of profit-oriented corporations. Those who pretend to the status punditry are almost all mere celebrities, terrified that someone in the studio just might turn off their front- and back-lighting.

  • Trumanette is done with polls, now that he doesn’t need any more votes. He’s learned to live on one-third approval. It is curious that the newspapers are ignoring that though.

  • The MSM gets their daily jolt from controlling what people see—and don’t see; hear—and don’t hear. They apply this insanity to its ultimate vision, in which the MSM possesses the magical power to force people to think what “they” want them to think—and not think what “they” don’t want them thinking. It’s like a great big Harrison Bergeron convention, where everybody shows up dressed like the Handicapper General….

  • Ahh the old liberal media in action again

    You know I hear that if it aint on Drudge it DOES NOT HAPPEN…

    So whenever ol Matt gets a chance to post it on his wonderful site ….the news media will follow suit and publicize this poll….so just sit back relax and chill…. I am sure he gonna put this information at the top of his site

    Until then we will be stuck with MSM stories about New Years Resolutions and the Healing Power and Heroism of Gerald Ford’s Presidency upon our nation in the mid 1970

  • If you want to see things really get ugly in this country, tell the people the troops think we’re losing. Confirm that our young men and women are being sacrificed for an objective that is not possible to achieve, while our President calls for more.

    To put it another way, how can we support the troops when they doubt the mission we’ve sent them on?

  • You know I hear that if it aint on Drudge it DOES NOT HAPPEN…
    Comment by lib4

    🙂 Good line. It also works with “if it is on Drudge it did not happen.”

    Imagine if they had polled the reserves. Then they would have gotten an earful.

  • Are you kidding me? Trust a poll by such a liberal media outlet as the Military Times? After all, Al Gore was a military journalist and look at him now. Why, they probably even asked the soon-to-be-ex General Casey about his opinion of the Decider in Chief and we all know how they don’t see eye to eye anymore. If someone’s stupidity led to the death of over 3,000 of your buddies in a war zone and destroyed the military you spent a career building up, would you have a favorable opinion of him?

  • I heard a what seemed like a reasoned analysis on the radio — I believe it was one of the NPR news shows, but could have been a replay of one of the Sunday Morning Talking Head television shows on C-span radio.

  • Check this out…

    Michelle Malkin claims* the poll says that 56% of the troops think the U.S. should have gone to war in Iraq.

    Digging up the real results gives the numbers shown in CB’s post.

    Typical Republican, I guess she’s either stupid or lying, or both. No wonder she doesn’t allow comments.

    * http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004204.htm

  • Makes the “If you don’t support the war, you hate our soldiers,” mantra sound even more idiotic.

    I think Steve nails it though. I would not be surprised if once the Ford funeral ends there will be a sudden smacking of heads and cries of “Egads, looky here, the soldiers don’t support the war!”

    The Goddess Media will notice when she is ready to notice and not a moment before.

  • I’m as big a critic of the MSM as anyone. However, I have to give CNN Kudos because they did mention the Military Times poll repeatedly throughout the morning hours yesterday.

    An Orange is Yellow

  • In terms of newspapers, the San Jose Mercury News…

    Yet another example of the stellar job this particular paper is doing of actually reporting on real news. I’m amazed that its new corporate masters haven’t clamped down on its bias toward reality.

  • How many news stories did you read about the GI Resistance 40 years ago? Then they didn’t even do polls, but everybody in the Pentagon knew in 1971 that the Resistance represented the majority opinion throughout the armed forces.

    How many of you even know about the GI Resistance to Vietnam???

    Thought so. 🙂

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