Taxpayer-funded PBS and NPR are now in the polling
business with Marist College, and like the other networks,
their polls are often used to support putting heat on
Republicans. On Wednesday, they announced they had found a
majority of Americans were disappointed with the president’s
responsive to the violence in Charlottesville. PBS then
ignored their own finding that 62 percent favored
leaving Confederate statues in place, while only 27 percent
want them removed. NPR reported it once, and then insisted
that had nothing to do with Charlottesville.
Buried in the weeds: They also asked if Americans approve
or disapprove of Black Lives Matter: 50 percent disapproved,
and only 33 percent approved. They even asked about approval
of Antifa, but few had heard of them yet: Five percent
approved, 24 percent disapproved, 18 percent said they had
no opinion either way, and 53 percent were unsure. But if
the results don't fit....you must omit?
Here’s how the PBS NewsHour presented the poll
on Wednesday night:
LISA
DESJARDINS: This was a poll done Monday and Tuesday. And
so some of this might include the president`s latest
reaction. Most of it is including his reactions from
Saturday. And here`s what we found. We asked people what
they thought about the president`s response; 27 percent
felt it was strong enough. But, Hari, a majority of
Americans felt, 52 percent, not strong enough.
Now, that did break down across party lines.
Republicans felt better about the president`s response
than did Democrats and independents, but on another
question, there was universal agreement. The question
was, should the fatal crash in Charlottesville be
investigated as an act of domestic terrorism?
Sixty-seven percent of those polled answered yes. And
that was the same across all parties. We saw that
resonate. And what`s interesting there, Hari, of course,
is that the president has yet to say this should be
investigated as domestic terrorism. He talks about
Islamic terrorism, but here Americans seem to be raising
a phrase that the president is not.
"We saw that resonate" is often network code for "our
liberal bias resonated." It's fairly obvious that the
terrifying vehicular homicide in Charlottesville strongly
resembled Islamic automobile attacks in Europe, and many
Republicans said so. The Justice Department is investigating
on that basis. But when you
skip over your own poll when it doesn't please you,
those results never get a chance to "resonate."
The poll reporting was also partisan on NPR. Here's the
first report on Wednesday night's All Things Considered.
Scott Horsley, who often sounded like a stenographer for
President Obama, loaded up the tilt on Trump:
SCOTT HORSLEY: Former Klan leader David Duke tweeted
"God bless you" to the president, for "setting the
record straight." Just 27 percent of Americans think the
president's response has been adequate. And the new
NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll found overwhelming
opposition to white supremacist viewpoints. Eighty
percent of the poll respondents were surveyed after
yesterday's news conference.
Horsley followed that with Trump-bashing soundbites by
Nicolle Wallace and Charles Sykes. Their poll unsurprisingly
found 86 percent mostly disagreed with white supremacy, and
four percent mostly agreed. (But America is deeply racist?)
Horsley struck the same theme on Thursday's Morning
Edition:
AILSA
CHANG: it's no secret that the president's poll numbers
are, to put it lightly, not great right now. So
shouldn't that make it easier for people in his party to
just - to speak out, to speak their minds?
SCOTT HORSLEY: Yes, it does. We saw a Gallup approval
rating for the president fall to 34 percent this week.
There's also a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll that
finds a majority of Americans think the president's
response to the events in Charlottesville has not been
adequate. So that does make it somewhat easier for
lawmakers and others to put some distance between
themselves and President Trump. But they're still
cautious.
The statue question came up on Thursday night’s All
Things Considered, but only to be dismissed as an
irrelevant pretext:
ROBERT SIEGEL: Before news of the Barcelona attack,
President Trump appeared defiant in tweets this morning
about his response to the Charlottesville protests,
defending what he called beautiful Confederate statues.
GEOFF BENNETT: That's right. He said it was sad that
the history and culture of the United States is being
ripped apart, as he put it, by the removal of these
statues and monuments - Confederate statues and
monuments, to be clear. But you know, I think the
president's pivot to statues may put him on safer ground
politically than his previous statement that both sides
share the blame for what happened in Charlottesville.
And as evidence of that, there's a new NPR/PBS
NewsHour/Marist poll that finds that some 62 percent of
Americans think Confederate statues should remain as
historical symbols.
But here again, the president is suggesting
that the white nationalist protests in Charlottesville
was fundamentally about a statue when it was really a
pretext for a rally aimed at expressing white
supremacist views with some of those in attendance, by
the way, clearly seen on video shouting anti-Semitic
slogans and raising Nazi salutes.