While the Beltway press continues to flood the zone with an onslaught of often dubious Islamic center coverage and commentary, a curious disconnect has emerged: Nobody cares about the story.
OK, "nobody" is an exaggeration. But there's growing evidence that voters, news consumers, and even New Yorkers aren't nearly as interested in the story as the press -- or conservative partisans --pretend we are. Plus, we have conclusive polling evidence that for a vast majority of Americans, the mosque story won't have any effect on how they vote in November. None.
It's true that polling indicates that Americans oppose the construction of the Islamic center near Ground Zero. But there's no indication that voters or news consumers care about the story. And honestly, why should they? Why would a local development issue located hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away weigh in the minds of voters for the November elections?
Is the Islamic center debate interesting, and does it carry with it some deeper political and cultural ramifications? Sure. And should it be covered? Absolutely. But a three-week running, front-page story? No way.
But shhh -- don't tell reporters, producers, and pundits. They're too busy co-sponsoring a right-wing production, burying us in an avalanche of mosque coverage and announcing that it's the "the issue that is trumping all right now."
How does the press know? Because the press says so. And you know the drill: When the right-wing freaks out over a story, the press instinctively asks how high they should jump. (Why else did the press play up the Michelle Obama vacation nonstory?) The dirty little secret is that the Beltway press loves to "cover" stories where very little journalism is required, and (surprise!) the GOP Noise Machine specializes in manufacturing them.
Read the full Media Matters column, here.
Follow Eric Boehlert on Twitter: www.twitter.com/EricBoehlert
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/august_2010/67_of_political_class_say_u_s_heading_in_right_direction_84_of_mainstream_disagrees
While the premise of the story in generally valid, the line quoted above is a classic misuse of statistical data. In a country where elections are usually decided by margins of less than five percent, whatever percentage *do* say the mosque will affect their vote (and the article doesn't specify that number; it may be as high as 26% depending on whether or not a 'none of the above' answer was allowed) may indeed be significant. From the information provided, we do not know.
Please send a copy to every news outlet. This craziness needs to cease.
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1437
Peace to all.....
Polls are performed privately, and contracted privately. And all too often (as now) the "results" are highly convenient for those who contract them. Who did the contracting and the calling, for the "poll" that purports to show that 68% would have the Cultural Center move from where it is currently planned to go? Who was on their call list? Did they include cell phones, or just antique land-lines?
As you can see, polling are an abuse of information waiting to happen. If you don't know the details about a poll, you can be pretty sure that those details have been purposely obscured -- and what does that tell you?
I won't believe any poll results unless I know these things, and all I've heard so far is about a purely generic, non-specific, "poll." Show me the numbers, if you want me to get worked up about something.
There's a few trustworthy polls that try to take a representative as possible sample, who publish all the poll data so there's complete transparency. But then, there's some transparent pollsters that skew questions towards a political viewpoint, so even though you can see the exact demographics of people polled, you don't know if there was a liberal or conservative slant.
Most of the major news networks are pretty accurate, but they're also completely underwhelming and really don't tell you anything you don't already know (just over half of Americans support the right to get married for gays and lesbians; support has been steadily trending upward for a decade - well, duh).
Check out fivethirtyeight.com (widely-published national pollster with ALL his data posted too) and publicpolicypolling.com, and they're pretty accurate.
Now, what about the Greek Orthodox church even closer to Ground Zero?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/nyregion/19church.html
Thanks for standing up for the principaled positions of "Real Americans".
I suggest you get out more.
How is all this disingenuous?
Peace/Salaams/Shaloom
(I personally don't know a single supporter of Muslim-bashing.!)