Rendering public opinion irrelevant

News Type: Opinion — Seeded on Mon Jul 21, 2008 1:33 AM EDT

Article Source: Salon.com

world-news, human-nature, news-bias, projected-public-dynamics

One of the most striking aspects of our political discourse, particularly during election time, is how efficiently certain views that deviate from the elite consensus are banished from sight -- simply prohibited -- even when those views are held by the vast majority of citizens. The University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes -- the premiere organization for surveying international public opinion -- released a new survey a couple of weeks ago regarding public opinion on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including opinion among American citizens, and this is what it found:
A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries finds that in 14 of them people mostly say their government should not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just three countries favor taking the Palestinian side (Egypt, Iran, and Turkey) and one is divided (India). No country favors taking Israel's side, including the United States, where 71 percent favor taking neither side.

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{"commentId":2240927,"authorDomain":"winsomecowboy"}

winsomecowboy

Back in 2003, then-presidential-candidate Howard Dean expressed the exact position favored by an overwhelming majority of Americans, yet triggered an intense and even ugly controversy by doing so:

Dean's Israel troubles began at a Sept. 3 campaign event in Santa Fe, N.M. When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said that day, "It's not our place to take sides." Then, on Sept. 9, he told the Washington Post that America should be "evenhanded" in its approach to the region.
That's all Dean said. It's a view held by more than 70% of Americans. It ought to be completely uncontroversial -- if anything, it ought to be that view that is deemed a political piety. But what happened?

This, according to an excellent account of that "controversy" in Salon by Michelle Goldberg:.........

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4 votes

#1 - Mon Jul 21, 2008 1:33 AM EDT

{"commentId":2243151,"authorDomain":"PamelaDrew"}

Pamela Drew

Fantastic seed winsome. It's nice to see that folks are noticing that we are being ignored collectively. It's almost like what's happened here at Newsvine by flooding a diversity of thoughtful opinions with mainstream's circle of homogenous pundits commenting on one another's opinions.

{"commentId":2243151,"threadId":"316622","contentId":"1682352","authorDomain":"PamelaDrew"}

4 votes

#1.1 - Mon Jul 21, 2008 12:09 PM EDT

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WINSOMECOWBOY

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Rendering public opinion irrelevant

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