{"id":9491,"date":"2007-01-02T09:45:16","date_gmt":"2007-01-02T14:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9491.html"},"modified":"2007-01-02T09:45:16","modified_gmt":"2007-01-02T14:45:16","slug":"if-a-military-times-poll-falls-in-a-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/if-a-military-times-poll-falls-in-a-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"If a Military Times poll falls in a forest&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Following up on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9481.html\">an item<\/a> from the weekend, the Military Times newspapers published a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.editorandpublisher.com\/eandp\/news\/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003526245\">massive new poll<\/a> after questioning 6,000 randomly selected active-duty members of the Armed Forces. The results ran counter to much of the conventional wisdom &#8212; 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.<\/p>\n<p>For reasons that are unclear, the media seems to have missed the poll entirely.<\/p>\n<p>Greg Sargent <a href=\"http:\/\/electioncentral.tpmcafe.com\/blog\/electioncentral\/2006\/dec\/30\/will_media_cover_poll_showing_troops_dont_back_surge\">noted<\/a> 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&#8217; opinions, I was surprised at just how little coverage the Military Times survey received.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of newspapers, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/mld\/mercurynews\/news\/local\/states\/california\/the_valley\/16356605.htm\">San Jose Mercury News<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/nationworld\/2003501934_militarypoll30.html\">Seattle Times<\/a> were the only U.S. papers to run stories of their own. <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/nm\/20070101\/pl_nm\/usa_iraq_dc&#038;printer=1\">Reuters<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtontimes.com\/upi\/20061229-103613-8497r.htm\">UPI<\/a> mentioned the poll in wire stories, which were not widely picked up. That&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s all the print coverage the poll received.<\/p>\n<p>Broadcast outlets were a bit better, with CNN and ABC mentioning the poll on the air, but that&#8217;s still not exactly widespread coverage.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s common for outlets to downplay poll results from rival news sources; papers and networks don&#8217;t want to give free publicity to competing news organizations. I get that. But the Military Times newspapers aren&#8217;t rivals to the major dailies. So why not mention a poll that highlights the fact that many troops disapprove of Bush, don&#8217;t support an escalation, don&#8217;t see Iraq as part of the war on terror, and don&#8217;t believe that success in Iraq is likely?<\/p>\n<p>It sounds kind of newsworthy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &#8212; barely one in three service members approve of the way the president is handling the war; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}