Misreading the Arab 'Street'

##### "Media Coverage of the Gallup Poll of ‘The Islamic World’" (Mar. 6, 2002), National Council on Public Polls’ Polling Review Board, www.ncpp.org/islamic\_world.htm; "The Poll That Didn’t Add Up" by Richard Morin and Claudia Deane, The Washington Post (Mar. 23, 2002), 1150 15th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071.

"In poll, Islamic world says Arabs not involved in 9/11." That was the shocking headline on the front page of USA Today on February 27. Reporting on a Gallup poll of residents in nine predominantly Muslim countries, the article noted (as did reports from other news organizations) that 53 percent of the respondents viewed the United States unfavorably and that only 18 percent in the six countries that let Gallup ask the question believed that Arabs carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Shocking proof that the Muslim world hates America? Hardly.

The National Council on Public Polls, a leading professional watchdog organization, called the Gallup study "important and fascinating," but faulted USA Today and Cable Network News (CNN) for making it seem (as did other news organizations) to be a study of "the Muslim world." Only about 40 percent of the world’s Muslim population lives in the nine surveyed countries (Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco, Kuwait, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia). Not all of the 10,000 respondents were Muslims, or even citizens of the countries in which they were residing. Four excluded countries (India, Bangladesh, Egypt, and Nigeria) each have more Muslim residents than many of the countries included.

The dismaying overall figures cited by the news media, the council points out, were the averages for the countries without regard to the size of their Muslim populations. Thus, Kuwait, with fewer than two million Muslims, was treated the same as Indonesia, with more than 200 million. Yet 36 percent of those interviewed in Kuwait regarded the September 11 terrorist attacks as morally justified, while only four percent of Indonesians did.

Though the council spanked only USA Today and CNN, it "could just as easily" have given a whack or two to the Gallup Organization, observe Morin and Deane, director and assistant director, respectively, of polling at The Washington Post. "As Gallup now acknowledges, it initially provided reporters with the sensational [overall figures] that were the primary target of [the council’s] criticism."