Fox tries to hide dismal poll results

explosiveliberal mentioned a Fox poll confirming Bush's waning popularity. I headed over to Fox News to see if I could dig up the poll. Midway down the Politics page, I found this article:

Poll: Some Traditional Allies Not Seen as 'Friends'

That was the only poll story, so I checked it out. There was a bunch of crap about Americans hating France and Germany, something about war support increasing (which runs counter to every other poll conducted recently), yet there are no questions about UN support. Nice. And convinient.

Still scrolling down -- oh wait! There's two sentences near the bottom of the story:

President Bush's rating is higher than that of the United Nations, but it is obviously slipping. Today, 55 percent approve of the job he is doing as president, down from 59 percent a month ago and 65 percent in December 2002.

Aha! Of course when Bush was in the 60s and 70s, that was the lead. But it's Fox, so they don't want to call attention to their man's falling fortunes.

But want to know the biggest outrage of this poll? It's not in the story, it's in the poll data at the bottom, question 18:

If the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks had taken place in Germany or France instead of the United States, do you think those countries would be more supportive of taking military action against Iraq?

1. Yes 76%
2. No 17
3. (Not sure) 7

Given that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, this is the type of question one would see in push-polling. In other words, Fox isn't content to gauge public opinion, it is trying to shape it.

I know, I know. Big surprise.

Posted February 27, 2003 06:08 PM | Comments (11)