What the New York Times Didn’t Report Regarding its Recent Poll

On Friday, the New York Times released results from its recent, comprehensive poll done along with CBS News. The Times devoted an entire article to this poll, and put it smack dab on the front page. Yet, the article curiously left out a few details that the Times editors must have thought were unimportant. For instance, 52 percent of those polled approve of the way the president is prosecuting the war on terrorism. This is the highest approval the president has received in this regard from a CBS News/New York Times poll since before Hurricane Katrina hit. This is quite surprising given all of the attention given to NSA eavesdropping over the past six weeks, and last week’s release of the Osama bin Laden tape.

Another finding of this poll that the Times omitted from its Friday article was that 50 percent of respondents said U.S. troops should stay in Iraq “as long as it takes to make sure Iraq is a stable democracy, even if that takes a long time,” compared to 45 percent who said we should leave as soon as possible. This stat bottomed in October with 36 percent saying “as long as it takes” and 59 percent saying “leave ASAP.” Moreover, this is the first time a majority said “as long as it takes” since last February. I guess these results were also deemed unimportant by the Times.

Finally, 39 percent of respondents said that America is safer from terrorism as a result of the war in Iraq. Only 19 percent said we were less safe. This is the highest number of respondents believing we’re safer since last February.

For what it’s worth, it appears from a Google search as well as a LexisNexis examination that although many media outlets have covered some of the findings in this comprehensive study, none have reported any of the above results.