The more I look into this gay-marriage-poll issue, the more interesting it gets. CNN has finally–if briefly and in a highly biased manner–discussed its own poll. The poll was mentioned on CNN’s Inside Politics with Judy Woodruff, which aired at 3:30 PM, Tuesday, April 5. The Washington Times story on the poll came out on April 1. My first Corner post asking why the poll wasn’t being covered was on the morning of April 4. Also, I found a Rush Limbaugh transcript raising the question of a possible suppression of this poll, although I can no longer access it. It would be interesting to see if the Limbaugh broadcast came before or after CNN’s broadcast mention of the poll on April 5. Was CNN covering itself in response to The Corner and/or Limbaugh? I have no idea, but it seems at least possible.
When CNN finally covered its own poll on gay marriage–four days after the Washington Times–what did it say? Bruce Morton did report that 68 percent of those in the poll opposed same-sex marriage. However, Morton said nothing about how much higher this number was than last year. Morton did grudgingly hint at what may be the most remarkable finding of the poll when he admitted that a “majority” of Americans now favor a federal marriage amendment. Yet Morton did not give the exact number–57 percent, a very high result. Nor did Morton note that only last year the number favoring a federal amendment was only 48 percent. The real story of this poll is not simply that the numbers opposing same-sex marriage are high, but that they are much higher than before the 2004 election. What’s more, as soon as Morton acknowledged “majority” support for a federal amendment, his guest, Thomas Mann, of the Brookings Institution, offered a long argument against a federal amendment–in the guise of a predication that an amendment wouldn’t pass. Again, the fact that public support for a federal amendment has risen sharply was completely suppressed.
You know that if this kind of major shift in public opinion were in the other direction, there would have been stories all over MSM. Ah, but wait. USA Today has covered its own poll after all. Here’s its story. Notice that there is not a word about the huge national shift on gay marriage. Instead, the whole story is the supposed national backlash against the GOP moral agenda! The uptick in the president’s popularity is acknowledged, but buried.
Here’s why all this is so important. Take a look at this story from today’s Christian Science Monitor. The Monitor is trying to acknowledge the spectacular success of the movement to protect traditional marriage, while pretending that a federal amendment can never pass. To accomplish this, the story refers to older polling data from a wide variety of sources. Trouble is, the new Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll flatly contradicts these older polls. True, it’s tough to blame the Monitor for this mess-up when CNN and USA Today have suppressed the results of their own poll. (On the other hand, the Washington Times had no trouble getting the real story out days ago.) In any case, having suppressing the new study, MSM can recycle its outdated data in a misleading effort to make gay marriage seem “inevitable.”
Just compare the Washington Times’s coverage of the new gay marriage poll with CNN, USA Today, and the Christian Science Monitor and you’ll see why we need an alternative media. CNN styles itself “the most trusted name in news.” Well, we don’t trust CNN, and with good reason. If we simply relied on MSM for the facts, like Dana Milbank wants us to, we’d never have learned the truth about an important shift in public sentiment. Without the Washington Times, The Corner, and Rush Limbaugh, the truth about this poll would have been successfully suppressed by MSM. Yes, Eric Alterman, there is a liberal media. Meanwhile, for a good account of gay marriage politics, I’d rather turn to a blogger like Polipundit.