posted December 02, 2005 11:48 AM            

Maybe if you look at People and National Equirer you can see what I'm saying.

5% of readers believe almost everything National Enquirer prints we'll say 75% - 100%. 7% believe 50 - 75% of what National Enquirer prints. 11% of readers believe say 25 - 50% of what National Enquirer prints. 77% of readers believe "almost nothing" or we'll say 0 - 25% of what National Enquirer prints. So overall 12% (5 + 7 = 12) believe over 50%, and 88% (11 + 77 = 88) believe less than 50%. That's logical for the National Enquirer.

So you could infer:

U.S. News - 34% believe less than 50%
Wall St. Journal - 34% believe less than 50%
Time - 37% believe less than 50%
NYT - 38% believe less than 50%
Newsweek - 37% believe less than 50%
USA Today - 40% believe less than 50%
Your Daily - 45% believe less than 50%
AP - 42% believe less than 50%
People - 63% believe less than 50%
National Enquirer - 88% believe less than 50%

posted December 02, 2005 07:11 PM            

Vietnam War Intelligence 'Deliberately Skewed,' Secret Study Says http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/politics/02tonkin.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1133564108-w1fgtVaRxr033IyCZDI7uA

posted December 03, 2005 11:59 AM              

Living in NY state,,not far form where the Times is published,,, its a shame to say, but many around here do take thier publications sereously, and as the end all be all too the truth of any article from what Ive observed resideing here.

goatgirl- I certainly apreciate what your saying, and the ways your puting it... But excluding Acoustic [and sorry if Im overlooking anyone else here Im not as familiar with],, your in the wrong forum down here for useing more artistic or abstract aproaches of communication, if you want them to hear you..

posted December 03, 2005 12:56 PM              

i suppose this stuff is on-topic in a post called 'aid the enemy'

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Said K. Aburish, former Iraqi government official, stated the following to PBS' "Frontline: The Survival of Saddam" program, broadcast on January 25, 2000 :

"The U.S. involvement in the coup against Kassem [General Abdel Karim Kassem] in Iraq in 1963 was substantial. There is evidence that CIA agents were in touch with army officials who were involved in the coup."

"There is evidence that they [CIA] supplied the conspirators with lists of people who had to be eliminated immediately in order to ensure success. The relationship between the Americans and the Ba'ath Party at that moment in time was very close indeed. And that continued for some time after the coup."

"I have documented over 700 people who were eliminated, mostly on an individual basis, after the 1963 coup. And they were eliminated based on lists supplied by the CIA to the Ba'ath Party. So the CIA and the Ba'ath were in the business of eliminating communists and leftists who were dangerous to the Ba'ath's takeover."

"And what gave the whole program of acquiring unconventional weapons an impetus was in the 1970s. The main aim of the West was to pry Saddam away from Russia. And in order to do that , they were bribing him. They were giving him everything he wanted. In the 1980s, the reasons changed [for helping Saddam]. ...Khomeini appeared on the scene and the West decided that Saddam was the lesser of two evils. And they continued to support him and give him what he wanted. In this case, including credit."
01/25/00 S.K.ABURISH

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Alfonse D'Amato, former United States Senator (R-NY) stated on PBS' Frontline broadcast on September 11, 1990 :

*

"It was a totally uneven policy. There was not a tilt towards Iraq, there was a wholesale rush to Iraq. Ignore everything. Ignore the state-sponsored terrorism. Take any little piece of propaganda that Saddam Hussein would put out, and it would become a wonderful thing. And right down to the last minute -- right down to his last crossing over -- we had State Department people -- in other words, from '81 right on through -- coming out and mouthing his [Saddam Hussein] lines."
9/11/90 A.D'AMATO

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"In the spring of 1990, Robert Dole [R-KS] led a Senate delegation to Baghdad. They reassured Saddam that public outrage over his human rights abuses would not be allowed to distort American foreign policy. But Saddam suspected another double-cross."
01/25/00 PBS

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Peter Camejo, a financial investment advisor, stated in an interview on Fox News on February 17, 2004 :

*

"[T]he United States and the CIA supported Saddam Hussein, right from the day he came to power, when the Ba'athists first came to power, they even gave lists of the names of people for the Ba'athists to murder, which they did."

"The CIA worked very closely with them and United States supported Saddam Hussein at every level -- gave him arms, gave him money, gave him political backing, the military helped him; none of this is really fully understood by the American people. And then the decision when he wouldn't follow orders from Washington, to go to war against Iraq, is an additional crime against the Iraqi people."

"Because first we put Saddam Hussein against them, a murderer and torturer, as George Bush says, without ever explaining of course, that politically we supported Saddam Hussein. His father in 1990 even sent a message to Iraq saying what a good job Saddam Hussein was doing. This is after he used poison gas on his people."
02/17/04 P.CAMEJO

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Roger Morris, a journalist, stated in his article "A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making", published in the New York Times on March 14, 2003 :

*

"Forty years ago the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein.

As its instrument the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Ba'ath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi army. According to the former Ba'athist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the CIA in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958."
03/14/03 R.MORRIS

********

Michael Dobbs, a journalist, stated in his article "U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup," published in the Washington Post on December 30, 2002 :

*

"The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait -- which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors -- is a topical example of the under-side of U.S. foreign policy."

"The U.S. policy of cultivating [Saddam] Hussein as a moderate and reasonable Arab leader continued right up until he invaded Kuwait in August 1990, documents show. When the then-U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, met with Hussein on July 25, 1990, a week before the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, she assured him that [President George H.W.] Bush 'wanted better and deeper relations,' according to an Iraqi transcript of the conversation. 'President Bush is an intelligent man,' the ambassador told Hussein, referring to the father of the current president. 'He [George H.W. Bush] is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq.'"

"'Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam,' said Joe Wilson, Glaspie's former deputy at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and the last U.S. official to meet with Hussein. 'Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and commercial relationships that would have the effect of moderating his behavior. History will demonstrate that this was a miscalculation.'"
12/30/02 M.DOBBS

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Noam Chomsky, stated the following in his article "What We Say Goes", published in Z Magazine on April 4, 1991 :

*

"Prior to August 2, 1990, the U.S. and its allies found Saddam Hussein an attractive partner. In 1980, they helped prevent U.N. reaction to Iraq's attack on Iran, which they supported throughout. At the time, Iraq was a soviet client, but Reagan, Thatcher and Bush recognized Saddam Hussein as 'our kind of guy' and induced him to switch sides. In 1982, Reagan removed Iraq from the list of states that sponsor terror, permitting it to receive enormous credits for the purchase of U.S. exports while the U.S. became a major market for its oil."
04/04/91 N.CHOMSKY

***********

Neil Livingstone, a journalist, stated on PBS' Frontline on September 11, 1990 :

*

"Well, Saddam came here [United States], of course, in 1967 with a group of other young Iraqi military officers, and was taken to all of our principle chemical weapons facilities -- Aberdeen, Edgewood, Dougway and Annistown. And he went through the process of seeing the design of weapons -- at least, seeing something about the design -- the manufacture of weapons, and their actual use and deployment on a battlefield."

"I'm sure that no national security secrets were given to Saddam Hussein and his colleagues, but at the same time, it was a course in the effectiveness of chemical weapons, how they can be deployed in a battlefield situation."
09/11/90 N.LIVINGSTONE

posted December 06, 2005 04:20 PM            

quote:

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In the Iraq war so far, the U.S. military has deposed a dictator who had already used weapons of mass destruction and would have used them again. As we now know, Saddam Hussein was working with al-Qaida and was trying to acquire long-range missiles from North Korea and enriched uranium from Niger.

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posted December 14, 2005 08:02 PM            

quote:

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5% of readers believe almost everything National Enquirer prints we'll say 75% - 100%. 7% believe 50 - 75% of what National Enquirer prints. 11% of readers believe say 25 - 50% of what National Enquirer prints. 77% of readers believe "almost nothing" or we'll say 0 - 25% of what National Enquirer prints. So overall 12% (5 + 7 = 12) believe over 50%, and 88% (11 + 77 = 88) believe less than 50%. That's logical for the National Enquirer.So you could infer:U.S. News - 34% believe less than 50%
Wall St. Journal - 34% believe less than 50%
Time - 37% believe less than 50%
NYT - 38% believe less than 50%
Newsweek - 37% believe less than 50%
USA Today - 40% believe less than 50%
Your Daily - 45% believe less than 50%
AP - 42% believe less than 50%
People - 63% believe less than 50%
National Enquirer - 88% believe less than 50%....acoustic

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acoustic, you are hopelessly confused.

The Pew Poll did not assign a percentage number to the amount of believability of the various news outlets. Where did you get that absurd idea?

posted December 14, 2005 08:05 PM            

Those polled were asked to rate the various outlets on a scale of believability of 4 down to one. 4, being all or most and on the other end of the scale, 1, being little or none. THEN the percentage of those who rated the news outlets on the scale of 4 down to 1 were placed in the category they chose....4, 3, 2, 1.

You could have saved yourself all that confusion if you had only used the link I provided and found the specific question the Pew pollers asked respondents. Here, I'll save you the time acoustic. I know how busy you are

PEW RESEARCH CENTER FOR THE PEOPLE AND THE PRESS MAY 2004 POLITICAL/BELIEVABILITY
FINAL TOPLINE May 3 - 9, 2004 N=1001

"Q.23 Now, I'm going to read a list. Please rate how much you think you can BELIEVE each organization I name on a scale of 4 to 1. On this four point scale, "4" means you can believe all or most of what the organization says. "1" means you believe almost nothing of what they say. How would you rate the believability of (READ ITEM. RANDOMIZE LIST) on this scale of 4 to 1? (INTERVIEWERS: PROBE TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN "NEVER HEARD OF" AND "CAN'T RATE")"
http://people-press.org/reports/print.php3?PageID=842

So acoustic, fully 79% of Americans believe the NY Times is prone to lying to them and it's higher still if those who chose category 4...because they believe most..are included. Even "most" shows a tendency to believe the NY Times lies part of the time.

posted December 14, 2005 09:52 PM            

I said in the post where I used percentages that they probably DIDN'T use percentages themselves when actually polling, and I gave a couple ways that they might have done it.

quote:

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I don't think percentages were probably used in a phone survey, though. It may have been, "NYT is a credible news source. Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree." It could have also been, "On a scale of 1 - 4 with 4 being the highest, how would you rate NYT's credibility?" So my using percentages to illustrate may not be completely accurate, but still illustrates how this table was created.

---

Category 1 is the column that shows the percentage who "Believe Almost Nothing," so fully 86% put themselves in a category MORE TRUSTING OF THE NYT than believing next to nothing. Put that next to your original assertion (You know you're in real trouble when only 21% of your readers believe what you print. --Jwhop) and there's quite a vast difference in accuracy.

Your 79% of people who believe a news source can make a mistake is compared with:

76% for U.S. News
76% for the WSJ
78% for Time
81% for Newsweek
81% for USA Today
81% for your daily newspaper
82% for the AP

Right there in the middle. Nothing dramatic about that! No zinger there, Jwhop. If there's a margin of error they're definitely within it.

posted December 14, 2005 10:27 PM            

As I said acoustic, you are hopelessly confused; failing to understand the underlying disaster this is for the news media. The only thing they have to sell is information and no one trusts a liar. 79% of those polled fall into the categories of those who actively believe the press lies.

This poll paints a vivid picture that Americans don't believe the news media across the broad spectrum of publications and broadcast news media.

The sooner you empty your head of your fallacious misconceptions acoustic, the sooner there will be room for objective reality.

posted December 14, 2005 11:57 PM            

There was no question asked of respondents which suggested they place a percentage estimate on the believability of the press entities they were polled on.

Anyone who can reason and count can clearly see 79% of respondents say the NY Times is not believable to varying degrees down to little or not at all.

I don't post on your schedule acoustic...or anyone else's.

posted December 15, 2005 12:17 AM            

Question 23 is exactly one of the possible ways I mentioned that they might have polled:

quote:

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It could have also been, "On a scale of 1 - 4 with 4 being the highest, how would you rate NYT's credibility?"

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I subbed "credibility" for their "believability." How many times must I quote myself before you'll read it?

"There was no question asked of respondents which suggested they place a percentage estimate on the believability of the press entities they were polled on."

quote:

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I don't think percentages were probably used in a phone survey, though...So my using percentages to illustrate may not be completely accurate, but still illustrates how this table was created.

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Once again, it appears you're not reading what I'm saying... that or you have serious comprehension problems.

"Anyone who can reason and count can clearly see 79% of respondents say the NY Times is not believable to varying degrees down to little or not at all."

quote:

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Your 79% of people who believe a news source can make a mistake is compared with:

76% for U.S. News
76% for the WSJ
78% for Time
81% for Newsweek
81% for USA Today
81% for your daily newspaper
82% for the AP

Right there in the middle. Nothing dramatic about that! No zinger there, Jwhop. If there's a margin of error they're definitely within it.

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I know you have issue with me calling it making a mistake. That's fair. The numbers are the numbers, though, and the NYT's numbers aren't out of line with any of the publications listed making them quite normal, and NOT AT ALL unusual with regard to credibility.

"Your last comment is bullsh*t acoustic and you know it."