Reference Materials
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeffcont.htm
AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF .. View as HTML
Charts from http://www.heritage.org/
-
The News Media and the War, 2005
As part of a larger study of how the views of “opinion leaders” compare with those of the general public, the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, in collaboration with the Council on Foreign relations, surveyed 72 top journalists in September and October 2005. The study, which was released on November 17, 2005, found that, compared to everyday citizens, journalists were more likely to have opposed the decision to go to war in Iraq, were more pessimistic about the chances of success in Iraq, and were far less likely to see immigration reform as a national priority. Reporters were also more disapproving of President Bush’s job performance.
KEY FINDINGS:
· The public was nearly evenly split on whether the U.S. should have invaded Iraq in 2003, with 48 percent agreeing with the decision and 45 percent disagreeing. But among journalists, 71 percent said they considered it a bad decision, compared to just 28 percent that thought it was the right move.
· Similarly, while the public is evenly split on whether the war in Iraq will help or hurt the U.S. in the overall war on terror (44% to 44%), three times as many journalists say the war in Iraq has been harmful as think it was helpful (68% to 22%).
· While 56 percent of the public said “efforts to establish a stable democracy” in Iraq will succeed, 63 percent of the news media elite think it will fail.
· Nearly half of the public (46%) believe torture of terrorist suspects can be “often” or “sometimes” justified, while 78 percent of the news media elite contend it is “rarely” or “never” justified.
· Just 17 percent of journalists said they thought “reducing illegal immigration” was a “top priority,” compared to 51 percent of the public who rate it as a “top priority.”
· Just 21 percent of the media approved of President Bush’s job performance in the fall of 2005, compared to 40 percent of the public.
In March and April 2005, the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy surveyed 300 journalists nationwide — 120 who worked in the television industry and 180 who worked at newspapers and asked for whom they voted in the 2004 presidential election. In a report released May 16, 2005, the researchers disclosed that the journalists they surveyed selected Democratic challenger John Kerry over incumbent Republican President George W. Bush by a wide margin, 52 percent to 19 percent (with 1 percent choosing far-left independent candidate Ralph Nader). One out of five journalists (21 percent) refused to disclose their vote, while another six percent either didn’t vote or said they did not know for whom they voted.
KEY FINDINGS:
· More than half of the journalists surveyed (52%) said they voted for Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, while fewer than one-fifth (19%) said they voted for Republican George W. Bush. The public chose Bush, 51 to 48 percent.
· When asked “generally speaking, do you consider yourself a Democrat, Republican, an Independent, or something else?” more than three times as many journalists (33%) said they were Democrats than said they were Republicans (10%).
· While about half of the journalists said they were “moderate,” 28 percent said they thought of themselves as liberals, compared to just 10 percent who said they were conservative.
· One out of eight journalists (13%) said they considered themselves “strongly liberal,” compared to just three percent who reported being “strongly conservative,” a four-to-one disparity.
· When asked about the Bill of Rights, nearly all journalists deemed “essential” the right of a fair trial (97%), a free press (96%), freedom of religion (95%) and free speech (92%), and 80 percent called “essential” the judicially-derived “right to privacy.” But only 25 percent of the journalists termed the “right to own firearms” essential, while 42 percent called that right “important but not essential,” and 31 percent of journalists rejected the Second Amendment as “not important.”