Tuesday, September 20, 2005

the zogby 911 poll

Some of you might remember this story from Zogby, August 30, 2004:
"On the eve of a Republican National Convention invoking 9/11 symbols, sound bytes and imagery, half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall say that some of our leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act," according to the poll conducted by Zogby International. The poll of New York residents was conducted from Tuesday August 24 through Thursday August 26, 2004. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of +/-3.5.

The poll is the first of its kind conducted in America that surveys attitudes regarding US government complicity in the 9/11 tragedy. Despite the acute legal and political implications of this accusation, nearly 30% of registered Republicans and over 38% of those who described themselves as "very conservative" supported the claim."
The story got a lot of attention online, but the poll didn't get much media coverage, and there wasnt any followup polling, either in NYC, or nationally, by Zogby or any others polling firms.

For one reason or other, the poll hardly received any press attention - Washington Post and UPI mentioned it in passing - and that's about it. (see here for other press)

The WaPo piece on Sep 1, page A22, is benignly titled: "9/11 Referenced as a Defining Moment - Some New Yorkers Question Whether Drawing Links to Attack Is Sound Strategy". Buried deep in that article is the following paragraph:
"A Zogby poll released Monday said that 49 percent of New York City residents believed that national leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned . . . and that they consciously failed to act." An even larger proportion of minority New Yorkers take this view. Sixty-three percent of black New Yorkers and 60 percent of Hispanics believe that officials had warnings, the poll said."
although they quickly countered it with this odd sentence:
"By no means do all New Yorkers believe this. Nearly 400,000 New Yorkers (out of 2 million in the city who voted) chose Bush in 2000, and many of them believe strongly that the president deserves credit for shielding the city from further attacks."
note the nice switcheroo - half of NY'ers think there was some govt complicity in the worst terrorist attack in america, but, on the other hand, 20% of NY'ers voted for Bush *before* the attacks, and 'many' (!) of them still like the president. Brilliant.

In making that claim, WaPo didn't think it worthwhile to mention Zogby's finding that "nearly 30% of registered Republicans and over 38% of those who described themselves as "very conservative" supported the claim."

A week after the poll, Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb weighed in on the apparent media lockdown:
"When a large majority of New Yorkers want a full reexamination of 9/11 crimes, and the press will not even report on that desire, let alone encourage its debate, we are living dangerously far from our founders' dreams and close to an Orwellian state." (link)
Given my piece on Zogby and the impeachment of the president, I wonder whether Zogby and others got 'the call' on the polling of government complicity in the 911 attacks. To be fair, Zogby did the 911 polling on behalf of a private client (911truth.org), but having said that, polling firms regularly do uncommissioned work where they have carte blanche to ask whichever questions they consider appropriate/relevant.

It's not entirely clear what criteria the polling firms use to decide which questions they will poll, however Gallup recently announced that (and WaPo concurred):
"...the general procedure Gallup uses to determine what to ask about in our surveys is to measure the issues and concerns that are being discussed in the public domain."
According to the Zogby poll, 49% of NYC'ers believe that their government is complicit in (domestic) mass murder - presumably they are discussing it somewhere - even if the media didn't cover the story.

I spoke with Nicholas Levis of 911truth.org (Zogby's client for the 911 poll) and he shared the following with me:
"I was on the street a lot in the days after the poll. Many journalists (were) in midtown, due to RNC. Any time I saw anyone with a press tag, I asked them whether they'd heard about the 9/11 Zogby poll... About half of them immediately knew what I was talking about."
I wonder if any of those journo's tried to write an article on the poll and were rebuffed.

There's no doubt that there is a story here, with many possible hooks - the paranoia of NY'ers, the failure of the 911 Commission to convince many people, whether this is an NY or a national phenomenon, the nature of response to traumatic events, or even the apparently imponderable "Are 50% of Ny'ers correct?"

400 scientists apparently 'believe' in so-called 'intelligent design' - and we are forced to endure numerous magazine covers from 'news' magazines, and endless hours of coverage on shows like Meet The Press, with ID-iot politicians like Bush and Frist begging that we 'teach the controversy'. Let's teach the controversy about 911 - if 50% of NYC'ers believe that their government was involved in 911, then maybe Tim Russert ought to have a show without the ID-iots and follow President Bush's advice and 'teach both sides'.

Much cyber-ink has already been spilt discussing the media's response to the Zogby poll, so I'll leave it there, other than to reiterate that the situation has prima facie similarities to the recent episode with Zogby refusing to follow-up on the question about the impeachment of the president.

Apparently there some questions that polling firms are simply not allowed to ask, and some stories that journalists can't touch.

Perhaps Bob Fertik at Democrats.com was onto something when he asked media pollsters : "Were you asked not to include (the impeachment) question, either by senior editors or Republican officials?"

Or maybe we simply live in a Panopticon world where Republican officials dont even need to ask such questions, given the widely publicised examples made of Joe Wilson, Richard Clarke, General Shinseki, Bunny Greenhouse and countless others.

Zogby's client, Nicholas Levis, described to me the process of negotiating with Zogby about the wording of the questions pertaining to 911. Levis wanted to survey the population about whether they thought that the American government "deliberately allowed the attacks to happen" but apparently that was too 'unprofessional' and John Zogby personally got involved because "they were afraid this would get them in trouble".

For the record, Zogby appears to be much better, and much braver, than any of the other polling organisations - and I applaud Zogby for asking this question (and the impeachment question) at all - so I don't mean to beat up on them, but at the same time, their behaviour allows us a rare, invaluable, peek behind the curtain. and it isnt pretty (otherwise there'd be no need for the curtain!)

again, i dont wanna beat up on zogby - but im so grumpy about what i learnt here - and it all sounds so dishearteningly familiar.
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