The headlines are great and upbeat. Headline of a Pew poll description: “A Rising Tide Lifts Mood in the Developing World — Sharp Decline in Support for Suicide Bombing in Muslim Countries.” Headline of the AP story on the poll: “Poll: More Muslims Reject Bombings.” But do the headlines tell the story? Here is the relevant chart from the poll:

There are real improvements, as the Pew poll states. Some of the declines in support for suicide bombing are indeed striking. Only one out of every three Muslims in Lebanon now support suicide bombing, a huge decrease. In Nigeria, the total is now a mere 42%. Maybe Palestinians now disapprove more of suicide bombing than they used to, though there are no comparable numbers for 2002 to demonstrate the decline.

Perhaps it represents progress that only 70% of Palestinians support blowing up random women and children. Perhaps. But perhaps too the headline writers could have been a bit more precise and descriptive in their characterization of the poll’s results.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 5:13 am and is filed under General, MSM, Polling, Religion, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.