World opinion opposes the attack on Afghanistan

The biggest poll of world opinion was carried out by Gallup International
in 37 countries in late September (Gallup International 2001). It found
that apart from the US, Israel and India a majority of people in every
country surveyed preferred extradition and trial of suspects to a US attack.
Clear and sizeable majorities were recorded in the UK (75%) and across
Western Europe from 67% in France to 87% in Switzerland. Between 64% (Czech
Republic) and 83% (Lithuania)of Eastern Europeans concurred as did varying
majorities in Korea, Pakistan, South Africa and Zimbabwe. An even more
emphatic answer obtained in Latin America where between 80% (Panama) and
94% (Mexico) favoured extradition. The poll also found that majorities
in the US and Israel (both 56%) did not favour attacks on civilians.
Yet such polls have been ignored by the media and by many of the polling
companies. After the bombing started opposition seems to have grown in
Europe. As only the Mirror has reported, by early November 65 per cent
in Germany and 69 per cent in Spain wanted the US attacks to end (Yates,
2001). Meanwhile in Russia polls before and after the bombing show majorities
opposed to the attacks. One slogan which reportedly commanded majority
support doing the rounds in Moscow at the end of September was ‘World
War III - Without Russia’ (Agency WPS 2001). After the bombing started
Interfax reported a Gallup International poll showing a majority of Moscow
residents against the US military action (BBC Worldwide Monitoring 2001).
Polling companies
The questions asked by a number of polling companies such as MORI, Gallup
and ICM have been seriously inadequate. They have failed to give respondents
a range of possible options in relation to the war. When polling companies
did ask about alternatives, support for war falls away quite markedly.
In the UK prior to the bombing, all except one poll, which asked the question,
showed a majority against bombing if it caused civilian casualties. After
the bombing started the polling companies stopped asking about concern
for civilians. From the start of the bombing to the fall of Kabul on 13
November there were only four polls on British opinion (by ICM (2001a,
2001b) and MORI (2001a, 2001b)) compared with 7 between the 11 September
and the start of the bombing on October 7. None has asked adequate questions
about alternatives to bombing. ICM did ask one alternative questions about
whether bombing should stop to allow aid into Afghanistan and 54% said
it should (Guardian October 30).
Where questions about aid or alternatives to bombing are asked the results
have been consistent: Clear and sometimes massive majorities against the
bombing. In an ignored poll, the Scottish Sunday Mail found that fully
69% of Scots favoured sanctions, diplomacy or bringing Bin Laden to trial.
Only 17% favoured his execution and a minuscule 5% supported bombing (21
October). The Herald in Glasgow also found only 6% favoured the then current
policy of bombing alone (3 November). It is well known that Scottish opinion
tends to be to the left of UK opinion, but not by more than a few points
on average. Although the Press Association picked up on the Herald poll
it was not reported in the British national press. Between the start of
the bombing and the fall of Kabul, (with the exception of the single question
in the Guardian poll showing 54% in favour of a pause in bombing) not
a single polling company asked the British public any questions about
alternatives to war.
It is not altogether clear whether the lack of options given to poll respondents
is due to the media or the polling companies. Certainly both UK and US
polling companies have been guilty of misrepresenting their own data almost
without exception overemphasising support for the war. For example Mori
claimed that its polling in late October had ‘extinguished any lingering
doubt’ that support was ‘fading’ (Mortimore 2001). Of course
this completely ignores all the poll data which would give an alternative
view and the fact that the polling questions have been inadequate.
Furthermore, according to Bob Worcester of MORI, (in an address to an
LSE meeting on the media and the war in November) the text of press reports
on their polls are cleared by MORI itself before they are published. This
is clearly a matter of good practice and should be applauded. But the
benefit is fairly marginal, if MORI is content for the press to distort
the level of opposition by concentrating on the ‘overwhelming’
support for the war and relegating opposition to the war to the end of
reports.
Media reporting
It comes as a surprise to many in the UK and US to discover that opinion
is so markedly opposed to or ambivalent about the current action. One
key reason is that the polls have been systematically misreported in the
media. Both television and the press in the US and UK have continued to
insist that massive majorities support the bombing. Senior BBC journalists
have expressed surprise and disbelief when shown the evidence from the
opinion polls. One told me that she didn’t believe that the polling
companies were corrupt and that she thought it unlikely that the Guardian
would minimise the opposition to the war. This was days after the Guardian
published a poll purporting to show that 74% supported the bombing (Travis
2001, 12 October). What the BBC journalist hadn’t noticed was that
the Guardian’s polls had asked only very limited questions and failed
to give respondents the option of saying they would prefer diplomatic
solutions. In the poll on 12 October one question was asked but only if
people thought enough had been done diplomatically. Given that the government
and the media had been of the opinion that enough had been done and alternative
voices were marginalised, it is surprising that as many as 37% said that
enough had not been done.
Furthermore the Guardian’s editorial position has offered (qualified)
support for the war and it did not cover the demonstrations in London
and Glasgow on 13 October. As a result of a ‘flurry’ of protests
this was raised by the readers’ editor at the Guardian’s editorial
meeting on 14 October and the editor agreed that this had been a ‘mistake’.
But, the readers editor revealed that it is the papers ‘general policy’
not to cover marches (Mayes 2001), thus condemning dissent to the margins
of the news agenda and leaving the field open for those with the resources
to stage ‘proper’ news events.
Elsewhere in the media, almost every poll has been interpreted to indicate
popular support for the war. Where that interpretation is extremely difficult
journalists have tried to squeeze the figures to fit. One Scottish newspaper
was so concerned at the low numbers supporting bombing that they phoned
me to ask how best to interpret the findings. Another paper, the Sunday
Mail showed only 5% support for bombing and 69% favouring conflict resolution.
Nevertheless the closest they got to this in their headline was that Scots
were ‘split’ on bombing (21 October 2001).
TV news reporters have routinely covered demonstrations in Britain and
the US as if they represent only a small minority of opinion. The underlying
assumption is that demonstrators only represent themselves rather than
seeing them as an expression of a larger constituency of dissent. Thus
BBC reporters claim that ‘the opinion polls say that a majority of
UK public opinion backs the war’ (BBC1 Panorama, 14 October 2001)
or in reporting the demonstrations in London that ‘Despite the strength
of feelings here today those opposed to military action are still very
much in the minority’ (BBC1 News 13 October 2001 21.50). These reports
are at best naïve, at worst mendacious, and a clear violation of
the legal requirement of the BBC to be balanced.
In the US dissent has been markedly harder to find in the news media (Solomon
2001). The pictures of dead children featured in the rest of the world
press been hard to find (Lucas 2001) and the debate on the use of cluster
bombs and the ‘daisy cutter’ bombs (a weapon of mass destruction)
which were debated in the mainstream UK media in late October were almost
non existent on the television news in the US. * CNN continued to report
under the heading ‘America Strikes back’ which is of itself
a woefully partial version of what was happening. Polling companies in
the US have given their respondents little choice of policy options. Where
they have asked a variety of questions answers opposing US policy have
been downplayed in media reports.
The New York Times reported on 25 September that 92% of respondents agreed
that the US should take military action against whoever is responsible
for the attacks’. But the text of the report belied the ‘support
for war’ headline indicating that fully 78% felt that the US should
wait until it was certain who is responsible’, before responding.
As Edward Herman, leading critic of US foreign Policy has written of the
inadequacy of polls which do not ask about extradition, civilian casualties,
or whether they would support action which breaches international law
(Herman 2001). One little reported poll for Newsweek in early October
showed that ‘58 percent of respondents said the U.S. government’s
support for Israel may have been the cause’ of the attacks, thus
indicating that America may have struck first rather that simply striking
back as CNN would have it.
Furthermore there is evidence that dissent in the US is being underrepresented
in responses to opinion polls. In a Gallup poll 31% agreed that the attacks
on the US had made them ‘less likely to say things that might be
unpopular?’
(http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr011008c.asp). And opposition to
the war is pretty unpopular in media coverage of the war. When Bill Maher,
host of the Politically Incorrect chat show criticised remarks by Bush
describing the WTC attackers as ‘cowards’, the White House spokesman
Ari Fleischer said: ‘There are reminders to all Americans that they
need to watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that’
(Usborne 2001). His show lost advertisers and was dropped by some networks.
Conclusion
The most fundamental problem with the polls is that they assume the public
has perfect information. But, notwithstanding some dissent in the press,
the media in the UK, and even more emphatically in the US, have been distorting
what is happening in Afghanistan especially on civilian casualties and
alternatives to war. To ask about approval of what is happening assumes
that people actually know what is happening. But given that a large proportion
of the population receives little but misinformation and propaganda (especially
on TV news which is most peoples main source of information) then it is
less surprising that some should approve of what they are told is happening
- that the US and UK are doing their best to avoid civilian casualties,
that Blair exercises a moderating influence on Bush.
When they are asked their own preferences about what should happen (rather
than approval questions about what is happening) then there is much less
support, even in the US. In other words there is no world support for
the attack on Afghanistan and public opinion in the US and UK is at best
dubious and at worst flatly opposed to what is happening. If Bush and
Blair were really democrats, they would never have started the bombing.
References
Agency WPS (2001) ‘What the papers say. Part I’, October 1,
2001, Monday ‘RUSSIANS WON’T SUPPORT PUTIN IF HE INVOLVES RUSSIA
IN RETALIATION’ Zavtra, September 27, 2001, p. 1
BBC Worldwide Monitoring (2001) October 9, 2001, Tuesday,
‘Public poll sees threat to Russia from US military action’
Interfax news agency, Moscow, in English 1137 gmt 9 Oct 01.
Gallup International (2001) ‘Gallup International Poll on terrorism in the US’
ICM (2001a) ‘ ICM RESEARCH / GUARDIAN POLL OCTOBER 2001’, published in the Guardian,
12 October.
ICM (2001b) ‘ ICM RESEARCH / THE GUARDIAN AFGHAN POLL - OCTOBER 2001’, published
in the Guardian, 30 October.
Herman, E. (2001) ‘Nuggets from a nuthouse’, Z Magazine, November.
Lucas, S. (2001) ‘How a free press censors itself’, New Statesman,
12 November, 14-15.
Mayes, I. (2001) ‘Leading lights’, The Guardian, Saturday review,
20 October: 7.
MORI (2001a) ‘ First poll on the Afghanistan War: Britons fully support Blair but fear retaliatory Strikes’ Poll for Tonight with Trevor McDonald, 11 October, 10.20pm,
ITV.
MORI (2001b) ‘ War of Afghanistan Poll’ for the Mail on Sunday, 4 November 2001
Mortimore, R. (2001) ‘ Commentary: Britain at war’ 26 October,
Solomon, N. (2001 ‘ TV news: a militarised zone’, Znet, 9 October,
Usborne, D. (2001) ‘Jokers and peaceniks face patriotic wrath’,
Independent on Sunday, 30 September: 7.
Yates, N. (2001) ‘War on Terror: the World questions America’,
The Mirror, 9 November.
David Miller
is a member of the Stirling Media Research Institute. He spent 10 days
in the US between 26 October and 4 November 2001 and compared the news
in the US with the debates taking place in the media in the UK.