Misinterpreting the Pew International Survey (more media bias from USAToday)

Jim Miller on Politics (blog) ^ | June 5, 2003 | Jim Miller

[TomB]

Misinterpreting the Pew International Survey:  Yesterday's USA Today article

on the Pew Survey of opinions in 20 nations began with this lead paragraph:

As President Bush plunges into Middle East diplomacy, a survey of 20 nations and the Palestinian Authority shows widespread distrust of his leadership, skepticism in the region about his plan for peace and less regard for the United States around the world.

This is, at the very best, misleadingly incomplete.  Suppose a weatherman was reporting temperatures and had the following four daily highs (in Fahrenheit), 83, 75, 48, and 70.  Would you think it a fair summary if the weatherman said that the weather was getting colder?  But that is precisely what USA Today does in the article.   Here is a table with the data for all 20 nations:

Favorable View of US (per cent)

	1999-	Summer	March	May
	2000	2002	2003	2003
Israel				79
Great Britain	83	75	48	70
Kuwait				63
Canada	71	72		63
Nigeria	46	77		61
Australia				60
Italy	76	70	34	60
South Korea	58	53		46
Germany	78	61	25	45
France	62	63	31	43
Spain	50		14	38
Russia	37	61	28	36
Brazil	56	52		34
Morocco	77			27
Lebanon		35		27
Indonesia	75	61		15
Turkey	52	30	12	15
Pakistan	23	10		13
Jordan		25		1
Palestinian Authority	14			1

If you look at the table, you will find several patterns, with a few interesting exceptions.  In the first two blocks of countries, Israel through Brazil, positive feelings toward the United States fell a bit between 2000 and 2002 in most countries, fell sharply just before the war with Iraq, and have already recovered to near pre-war levels.  In the Muslim countries in the third block, positive feelings collapsed somewhere between 2000 and 2003.  This change in Muslim views is so important that I will analyze it in a separate post, and will limit this discussion to the opinion in the other nations.

The most important pattern that I see is this:  In every single nation for which we have March and May data, the image of the United States improved in that period.  In other words, the trend is in our favor.  Would you have guessed that from reading the lead paragraph I quoted?

Two exceptions in the table are significant.  Views of the United States in Russia now seem to be back to where they were in 2000, after a remarkable rise in 2002.   One wonders if there wasn't some systematic problem in the Russian polling that year.   Nigeria, a country about half Muslim, now has a higher opinion of the United States than it did in 2000.  Since Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, that probably says something about how we are viewed in the sub-Saharan part of Africa.

The USA Today article was misleading, but other newspapers were simply wrong.  I found the same negative spin in the New York Times, the Seattle PI, and the Washington Post.   The headlines for their three articles were, respectively, "World's View of U.S. Sours After Iraq War, Poll Finds", "Worldwide opinion of U.S. drops since Iraq war, poll finds", and "Arab Hostility Toward U.S. Growing, Poll Finds".  The Seattle PI and New York Times headlines are directly contradicted by the data.  There is no data to support the Washington Post's headline, but, since opinion in every nation for which we do have data is shifting toward the United States, it is likely that opinion is shifting in that direction in Arab countries, too. (If you have seen articles with similar errors in other newspapers, let me know so I can add to this list.)

If you want to do your own analysis, you can download the report from the press release here.

[TomB]

Another example of how hard it is for the left wing media to get away with anything anymore now that websites such as Free Republic and bloggers are around doing their fact-checking for them.

Actually, the interesting point to this story isn't that the USAToday left out important numbers to the poll to skew it in their favor, it is that this study puts the lie to the charge that Bush has "squandered the good feeling from 9-11 in the international community".

These numbers prove that allegation to be, quite simply, wrong.

[Mister Baredog]

The most important pattern that I see is this: In every single nation for which we have March and May data, the image of the United States improved in that period. In other words, the trend is in our favor. Would you have guessed that from reading the lead paragraph I quoted?

Someone should tell those Pew folks that we don't govern by poll anymore, that was the Clintoon gang.

[LS]

The author probably should know that Nigeria is only about HALF Muslim, and that it is witnessing the most rapid surge in Christianity in the WORLD.

In 1999 or 2000, Reinhard Boennke held an evangelical meeting there attended by six million people in one week! (this is the largest "revival" in human history, eclipsing Pope John Paul's largest meetings) and 1.6 MILLION made professions of faith in writing---not just an "altar call." He had more than one million present on one night alone.

[TomB]

"while-I'm-here-I-might-as-well-bump" bump

[whereasandsoforth]

Pew! Do I smell something?

[TomB]

I've seen this poll mentioned in a few news stories and also quoted by the anti-war paleo wing of FR in the past few days. Here is a good discussion of the numbers.