Survey Results Differ with Media on Ground Zero Mosque

Wednesday's Example of Media Bias   —   Posted on September 22, 2010

…According to a recent poll, Arabs living abroad are more likely to be opposed to the “Ground Zero Mosque” than the American media are.

According to a recent survey by the Arabic online news service Elaph, 58% of Arabs think the construction should be moved elsewhere.  And according to a Media Research Center study released last week, 55% of network news coverage of the debate has come down on the pro-Mosque side.

The MRC study also found that on the question of whether opposition to the mosque demonstrated a widely held “Islamophobia” among Americans, 93 percent of network news soundbites answered in the affirmative. In contrast, when asked whether the United States is a “tolerant” or “bigoted” society, 63 percent of Elaph respondents [responded] “tolerant”.

So the Arab world has a more favorable view of Americans than our own media elite, and sides with the American people over the network news broadcasters…

Faoud Ajami highlighted the Elaph poll in his Wall Street Journal column on Monday:

From his recent travels to the Persian Gulf-sponsored and paid for by the State Department, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf returned with a none-too-subtle threat. His project, the Ground Zero Mosque, would have to go on. Its cancellation would risk putting “our soldiers, our troops, our embassies and citizens under attack in the Muslim world.”

Leave aside the attempt to make this project a matter of national security. The self-appointed bridge between America and the Arab-Islamic world [Imam Rauf] is a false witness to the [viewpoint of people] in Islamic [countries].

The truth is that the trajectory of Islam in America (and Europe for that matter) is at variance with the play of things in Islam’s main habitat. A survey by Elaph, the most respected electronic daily in the Arab world, gave a decided edge to those who objected to the building of this mosque – 58% saw it as a project of folly.

…After Pastor Terry Jones threat[ed] to burn copies of the Quran, [Elaph] queried its readers as to whether America was a “tolerant” or a “bigoted” society. The split was 63% to 37% in favor of those who accepted the good faith and pluralism of this country.

So a larger proportion of Arabs believe in that notion than American journalists. That is a sad indictment of the press in this country.

Read the original post at newsbusters.org.

Read an additional report “Media Ignore Muslim Opposition to Ground Zero Mosque“