AP: Support For Iraq War Waning

Or that's what the AP would want you to believe. Today the AP has released a poll and rather than simply printing the findings of the poll, they take the opportunity to editorialize on it.

According to the poll, 53% of Americans now feel that the creation of a stable democratic Iraq is unlikely compared to 43% who still believe it will happen. This is down from last April when 55% of Americans polled felt it was likely. Support in every demographic has slid. Specifically mentioned was those who make between $25,000 and $50,000.

Other groups that showed a significant decline were those with incomes between $25,000 and $50,000 a year, young men, those without college educations - groups very likely to know people serving in Iraq.

I'm not sure how they can make that assumption. I'm not in that demographic yet I know many people, including family members, that are serving in the military in the War on Terror. How was this assumption reached? Or was this more to try and introduce the idea that the military men and women and their friends and family are the ones that are turning on the conflict in general. Little editorials sprinkled here and there introducing a bias in the article.

And that's the point. Like I posted about before, the media keeps pounding and pounding on the negative aspects of what is going on in Iraq and has successfully begun to erode public support for the war. If we heard every day, over and over, when each person in this country was killed in a car accident and kept track of the death toll on the streets and if we were pounded on about the horrible effect cars were having on all of our lives, sooner or later it would erode the public support of cars. That's what is going on with our coverage in Iraq. Unlike with cars where we can see the benefit in our every day lives to balance out negative press, we can't easily see the positive coming out of Iraq allowing us to have a balanced perspective of our progress over there. The AP even admits it though they probably didn't realize it.

The steady news reports of violence in Iraq have taken a toll.

If a person took time on the internet, they could find the positive stories too, but most people do not have the time to do that and only get what they see on the 6:00 news or in stories from the AP.

After spending most of the whole article talking about the pessimism of the country concerning Iraqi democracy and stability they throw in as an aside this little piece of information almost at the end of the article:

Even though Americans are becoming more pessimistic about Iraq's future, support for the troops remains high. A majority still supports keeping troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized, despite the worries.

"We can't pull out now, not after all those guys have died," said Janice Shinn, a Republican-leaning postal worker from Pedricktown, N.J. "But we have to see it through. We can't just leave like we did in Vietnam."

...and people don't understand what we mean by a media bias....