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Edited on Sun Jan-02-11 05:43 PM by JackRiddler
First of all, I have no problem accepting that most Americans in the current environment disapprove of Wikileaks. That's likely to be true. Most Americans are woefully uninformed or misinformed about the world generally, at a time when Wikileaks has been subject to an extremely negative treatment in the US corporate media.
The CNN question was as follows:
"As you may know, a website called Wikileaks has displayed thousands of confidential U.S. government
documents concerning U.S. diplomatic and military policies. Do you approve or disapprove of the
Wikileaks website displaying these documents?"
They found an approval rating of 20 percent.
There is no such thing as a completely objective question. In the above, to say "documents concerning US diplomatic and military policies" is subtly different from the alternative, "logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and cables from the State Department." The latter omits the positively-connotated word "US" but is an even more accurate rendering of what the documents actually are. One might object that many people won't even understand what "logs" or "cables" refer to, but this objection would only highlight the problem that the respondents may not be very well informed.
One of the essential elements of science is the idea of a means to control or compare. A truly scientific poll would provide a control for the tool employed. The tool employed in this case is the key question being asked.
It is possible to control for the effects of the question, by asking different questions of different sample groups (sorry if that costs more money, CNN) and comparing the results.
It is not a false statement, for example, to say that the cables released by Wikileaks "in part expose government corruption and corporate malfeasance," or "secrets about what the government is doing abroad," or "secrets the government would prefer not to see published." These phrases are no less "objective" than CNN's, as objectivity itself is contested. Regardless, they are factually true phrases.
If they'd included one of those phrases, the numbers would very likely be higher in approval. You would at the least have a basis for determining how much of the answer depends on how the question is phrased. You would better know what the bedrock approval or disapproval is at this time (i.e., regardless of how the question is phrased).
It is also not a false statement to say that "Wikileaks' release of the cables has been condemned by the US government." If they included that phrase, the approval numbers would probably be lower. (I believe the approval numbers are close to bedrock approval, i.e. that the 20 percent represent well-informed people who support Wikileaks regardless of the question, but who knows?)
Furthermore, a scientific survey would endeavor to see how well informed people were about the subject in the first place. If this is the first people are hearing about Wikileaks (true of many of them, without a doubt), they will be more likely to disapprove.
Therefore the approval question needs to be preceded by questions about whether one recognizes the name of Wikileaks, can say accurately what it is (e.g., an Internet based publication that releases confidential information fed to it by anonymous whistleblowers), can say what Wikileaks has released (e.g., Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, State Department cables), and so forth.
If they had added these very basic questions, you would know the differences between relatively informed and uninformed opinion. This is of obvious relevance: informed opinions tend to be more stable, uninformed opinions tend to shift around a lot as people learn more.
However, I submit that CNN's record as a news organization suggests they are not interested in informed opinion.
To repeat, Wikileaks and Assange have been bombarded with continuous attacks in the corporate media, including by CNN, and Assange has been likened to a TERRORIST!!! (magic word!) by no less a high-ranking figure than the Vice-President. It's little surprise that when the corporate media create a toxic atmosphere, their own polls later measure the presence of the poison.
Please recall what happened to ACORN when they were subjected to a media vilification campaign after the O'Keefe/Breitbart sabotage operation. The disapproval numbers for them were even worse.
The good news in the CNN poll is that TWENTY PERCENT of Americans have not bought the corporate media snow-job about Wikileaks and, as more stories from the cables come out and as people become better informed, that is likely to improve.
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PS - If you haven't had a chance yet to read the many, many stories of government and corporate malfeasance that have been highlighted, exposed for the first time, or confirmed by the mere 1750 of 251,000 cables so far released, there is a growing compilation thread here on DU. Click on the first link in my signature line ("Old News"). People have been adding links to cable stories, and also to resources for searching the cables. So it's turning into a good resource for starting out. Do your due diligence and use wikileaks.ch to find and check the cables yourself!
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