Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Poll highlighted in NYT misrepresented Australian views
Australian political commentator Gerard Henderson, writing in todays's Sydney Morning Herald, sheds light on distorted recent "poll findings" that Australians are somehow as "worried" about George Bush's United States as they are about Islamofascism:
The crucial finding (of the poll, called "Australians Speak 2005") ... was that Australians regard Australia's alliance with the US as "very important" (45 per cent), "fairly important" (27 per cent) or "somewhat important" (20 per cent), leaving only 7 per cent who believe that the Australian-American Alliance is "not at all important" for Australian security.
Yet the domestic and international reporting gave a different impression. For example, The New York Times ran a heading "US image in Australia isn't so good, polls finds" while the International Herald Tribune headed its report "Australians view US as a threat to peace".
... (T)he committee decided to ask respondents how worried they were "about the following potential threats from the outside world". Included in the list was "Islamic fundamentalism" (which scored a total "worried" response of 78 per cent), "US foreign policies" (79 per cent) and "China's growing power" (61 per cent).
... (O)n what basis did the committee present US foreign policy as a "potential threat"? ...
The survey found that about 66 per cent of Australians support the right to take pre-emptive military action to "strike directly" at "terrorists based in another country".
(emphasis added, throughout)
Strike yet another credit for instinctively mistrusting mainstream media, it seems.
