USA Today/Gallup Poll: "Most" Americans Support Congressional Muslim Witch Hunt Hearings

So there I was today, scanning the national news headlines, when my attention was caught by this headline from USA Today's website:

I was taken aback because of the inference I automatically made upon reading - that there was a large majority of the public applauding the hearings that Republican Rep. Peter King intends to hold to "investigate" Muslim radicalization on American soil. It bothers me a lot to think that there might be significant majority support for something that I and others regard as an exercise in public shaming and vilification of a religious minority.

And so, I clicked the link to read the article in search of clarification. Sure enough, the lede confirmed the headline's assertion.

As Congress prepares to hold a hearing investigating the radicalization of Muslims living in the United States, a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds that a majority of Americans feel it is appropriate to focus the hearing just on U.S. Muslims.

I kept reading, because I'm cursed with a measurable attention span, and finally came upon this fourth paragraph:

The new poll finds that 52% of Americans feel the hearing is appropriate, while only 38% believe the hearing is inappropriate. Another 10% of Americans have no opinion.

Now I had some numbers to work with as I sought data to analyze and thereby draw my own conclusions. On the face of it, I suppose it does look to some people as though a sizable majority of Americans support the hearings. After all 52% think there are "appropriate," while only 38% disagree.

But hang on. Fifty-two percent is only two points over one-half of the polling pool, so it's kind of hard to see that as some kind of mandate. And if you add together those who answered that the hearings are inappropriate with those who said they have no opinion, you get 48%. Only four percentage points separate those who find the hearings appropriate and the rest of respondents, and let's see... what's this poll's margin for error? Aha! Four points. So, really, the results could easily have come out at 48% approving of the hearings.

Now I will grant that the word "most," technically, means "more than half," and that USA Today's headline is therefore perfectly accurate. But I'm puzzled by their choice to present the findings of this poll in a way that was almost guaranteed to suggest a larger majority than was actually found. They could have just as accurately characterized the results as "Americans divided on Muslim hearings" or "Slight majority of Americans think Muslim hearings appropriate."

Still, I could be reading a non-existent bias into the headline. But it certainly took writer Alan Gomez a long time to get around to presenting the actual numbers. If I were writing a story about a 52% poll finding and my lede stated that "a majority of Americans feel it is appropriate to focus the hearing just on U.S. Muslims," I would make certain that the next paragraph revealed the exact percentage, just in the interest of factual clarity.

I'm further bothered by the order in which a couple more of the poll results were presented in this article. Apparently, the poll included questions about whether the respondents think American Muslims are "supportive of the United States" and whether they think American Muslims are "committed to their religion." The results were presented thusly:

While 53% of Americans feel Muslims are supportive of the United States, 82% believe they are committed to their religious beliefs.

Now, I don't even know what "supportive of the United States" is supposed to mean. I've been accused of being "against America" for opposing wars and various other actions and policies of various administrations. Surely this question is both so vague and so subjective as to be nearly meaningless. As for the other question, when was the last time you saw "they are committed to their religion" offered as a subtle implication that Americans believe Christians are unpatriotic?

After this point, Gomez finally ponies up the fact that a "majority of Americans do not believe, however, that Muslims in America have become radicalized."

Fifty percent do not think Muslims are too extreme in their religious beliefs, while only 36% hold that view. The poll also found that 54% believe Muslims are not sympathetic to the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, while only 28% think they are sympathetic.

I'm not sure 50% should be labeled "a majority," but at this point, quibbling over such interpretations misses the real problem with this story. When I look at the results presented in this article - the actual polling data is not yet available on Gallup's website - I don't see "a majority of Americans" thinking any one way on this issue. What I do see is a public deeply divided and probably confused by the media's ratings-driven approach to coverage of American Muslims. After the relentless media-led hysteria over "the Ground Zero mosque" and the frenzied national attention paid to any Muslim-related crime or terrorist attempt or act (while mostly ignoring stories of non-Muslim homegrown terrorism), how can we expect the average American to know what to think about their fellow citizens of the Muslim variety?

USA Today had a chance to explore the confused, sometimes even contradictory perceptions Americans have about the Muslim population in this country, but instead they chose a sexier and less accurate angle for the story. That's not exactly a shock, because when I think "great journalism," I certainly don't think "USA Today." And it's a little unfair to pick on that media outlet without acknowledging that most of our media do pretty much the same thing, all the time.

Still, I'm uneasy about it, because I know how many people are likely to read only that headline or the first paragraph or two. When people hear "a majority," they are probably going to be thinking about a heftier point spread than four points. And if they think a large number of people think the Muslim hearings are a good thing, then chances are good that those people will simply agree, without any more thought than that.

That's never a good thing. On any issue.

EDIT: I meant to mention during this post that the excessively inflammatory title was intentional and that I recognize it's a mischaracterization much like the one that I'm complaining about.