Check this out:When given a choice between more information about our intelligence-gathering methods and less safety, or less information about our intelligence-gathering and more safety, which do the public choose? The public tends to prefer more safety. The media prefer more information. And the media would prefer the public believe it agrees with them, even if it has to cook a few surveys to establish that canard.
A recent CBS News/New York Times poll brilliantly illlustrated how the public shifts sides on this question depending on how the question is framed. First question: "In order to reduce the threat of terrorism, would you be willing or not willing to allow government agencies to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of ordinary Americans on a regular basis?"
"Ordinary Americans"?! The only Americans being tapped would be those suspected of helping wage war on America -- hardly "ordinary Americans." Who could support secret government surveillance of ordinary Americans? It's not surprising that this idea was rejected: 70 percent say they're not willing to allow that, and only 28 percent say yes.
Then the CBS/Times pollsters changed the wording to be much more precise in who is being monitored: "In order to reduce the threat of terrorism, would you be willing or not willing to allow government agencies to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of Americans that the government is suspicious of?" When the targets are suspected terrorists or sympathizers, the poll numbers completely flipped: 68 percent support monitoring them, and only 29 percent say no.
Now consider that according to the CBS/New York Times pollsters, President Bush has a 42 percent job approval rating, and a 52 percent approval rating in fighting terrorism. It's shocking to see that almost 70 percent-- including a big chunk of people who aren't wild about Bush -- support keeping electronic tabs on our enemies.
It's also somewhat shocking that our supposed accuracy-lauding media have preferred the first, more inaccurate phrasing -- spying on "ordinary Americans" -- over the second phrasing about terrorist suspects. In an eye-opening study of the 69 stories on the last seven weeks of ABC, CBS, and NBC evening-news coverage, Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center found that the TV reporters described who was being monitored.
Most correspondents in those stories portrayed the NSA as casting a wide net, targeting "Americans" or "U.S. citizens" (53, or 40 percent), or used terms such as "domestic" or "communications inside the U.S." (60, or 45 percent). ABC's Dan Harris even began on Dec. 24 by hyping "the spying was much more widespread, with millions of calls and e-mails tracked 52; perhaps even yours."
So much for a fair and impartial media, eh? so much for simply reporting the news, and not framing and spinning the news, eh?
This shows most Americans do favor wiretapping of calls involving known terrorists, which is the current program. However, if you are a Democrat or a member of the press, you are far more concerned with leaking the methodology than in halting further attacks.
