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It's All About the Framing: How Polls and the Media Misrepresent the Keystone XL [Tar Sands] [Oil] Pipeline
First of all, you won’t find tar sands mentioned in any of the polling. And in most polls, you won’t even find oil. It’s just the Keystone XL pipeline, no context, no mention of what it will carry, and certainly no mention of the environmental risks of building a massive pipeline to carry toxic tar sands sludge through the heartland of America to the gulf of Mexico, where it would be exported out of the U.S. 
Tar Sands Destruction in Canada
The question asked by two recent polls, one by Rasmussen and the other by the National Journal, was more or less, “Do you support or oppose building the Keystone XL pipeline?” And the Rasmussen poll also asks if job creation is more important than protecting the environment, posing these two goals as oppositional.
Most Americans don't see it that way. In our opinion research and other opinion research, such as the major new survey in the West, Americans overwhelmingly believe that a strong economy and the environment can go hand in hand. And they show a real concern for protecting resources, such as our water supply, from degradation. But both the Rasmussen and the National Journal polls show a majority of Americans in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline.
But are they really?
What if the pollsters changed the question to more accurately represent the actual project and inserted “tar sands oil pipeline”? What if they described to the public that the pipeline would jeopardize one of America’s most important freshwater aquifers, the Ogallala? What if they were told that a first pipeline just like the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and built by the same foreign company, TransCanada, had had over 12 spills in the U.S. (30 if you count Canada) in just its first year of operation? What if they were told that the oil is not really oil but a toxic sludge that is largely strip mined from under the Boreal forest in Canada and has to be diluted with toxic chemicals and pushed through pipelines at high temperature and pressure in pipelines only regulated to carry conventional oil? And what if the public were given the opportunity to choose a tar sands oil pipeline or increasing our reliance on homegrown renewable energy?
No poll has set this tar sands pipeline in any kind of context. Instead most of the questions are preceded or followed by generic questions about jobs and the economy or with questions about whether the country is going in the right direction.
So, without context, what do you think most Americans would first think of when asked about a pipeline?
Jobs and the economy.
And that is just the framing they have also been hearing again and again from the media.
Take jobs as an example. Job creation has been the major argument put forward by pipeline proponents. Even though TransCanada is on record admitting that there would in fact be no more than 6,500 jobs over two years and only hundreds of permanent jobs, that has not stopped the company, the American Petroleum Institute, Republicans on the Hill and the Republican Presidential candidates from saying the pipeline would create hundreds of thousands of jobs and putting it forward as a national jobs plan rather than the single construction project that it is. The jobs estimates have been so wild that Stephen Colbert couldn’t resist poking fun at the million jobs pipeline.
Lots of Americans are suffering right now and jobs creation must be a top priority but at what price and who benefits? The one independent study that has been done on the jobs issue, by Cornell Global Labor Institute, found that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would be a jobs killer because it would suppress clean energy jobs and because inevitable spills would cost jobs in other sectors of the economy. When all of the risk is being underwritten by American families and the major beneficiaries are the major oil companies, you have to ask is this good for our economy in the long run? Roger Toussaint of the Transit Workers of America said it best when he said, “We want jobs but not as gravediggers for the planet”.
So let’s dig in a bit regarding what the public has been hearing.
Media Matters, a nonprofit organization that tracks the media, released a survey that analyzed coverage of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from August 1 to December 31, 2011. They found that the media overwhelmingly framed the pipeline as a jobs issue. In 33% of the broadcast coverage, the highly inflated jobs numbers were repeated verbatim. In none of this coverage was any criticism of those figures mentioned. It was not much better for cable news. In 45% of the coverage, the figures were repeated verbatim. And only 11% of the coverage mentioned any criticism. Fox News repeated the jobs numbers more than all the other TV networks combined. Print news was not much better, with 29% repeating the jobs figures verbatim and only 5% mentioning any criticism.
It also seems to matter who you interview.
Here is a figure that really made me shake my head -- 79% of the time, broadcast news reporting on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline interviewed a pipeline proponent. Only 7% of the time did they interview a tar sands pipeline opponent. Cable news was not much better: 59% of the coverage featured proponents and only 16% featured opponents. Print news did slightly better with 45% featuring proponents and 31% featuring opponents.
And this was over the period of time when there were 1250 peaceful protesters arrested in front of the White House and then a few months later when nearly 15,000 people gathered and encircled the White House opposing the pipeline. It was during the months when an Inspector General investigation was launched into the State Department mishandling of the environmental review. And it covered the period when the President declared that more environmental studies needed to be conducted to understand the risks of the pipeline to the American public and find a new route that avoided the sensitive Ogallala and Sandhills regions of Nebraska.
Media Matters collected data on how jobs and energy security mentions compared to environmental mentions. In broadcast, cable, and print respectively, jobs were mentioned 67%, 77%, and 68% of the time. Energy security was mentioned 22%, 28%, and 54% respectively. And environment was mentioned 17%, 34%, and 65%. Coverage of the State Department mishandling of the review process was scarcely mentioned at all.
What’s more is that since Media Matters did their survey, the rhetoric around the pipeline has become even more extreme and even venues like the New York Times, which has been one of the exceptions in providing fair coverage of the pipeline, are running political stories about the pipeline that don’t include any environmental perspective.
So it is not surprising that when Americans are polled by Rasmussen and the National Journal, where they throw out a few quick questions or maybe just one question on the pipeline, we’re getting higher than expected levels of support. Given the Media Matters survey, I am frankly surprised the numbers aren’t worse.
I went to google Speaker Boehner’s statements on Keystone XL and I found that “Keystone” is actually one of the words most frequently associated with the Speaker (after crying, birthday song, and payroll taxes). That’s because he and the Republicans in Congress have taken up the pipeline as a holy crucible. The reality is that the “Keystone Energy Project” – as he likes to describe it (notice we lose even the mention of pipeline) – is the top bidding of the oil industry. After defeating the climate legislation on the Hill, there has been no higher priority. And in addition to the lopsided media coverage, Americans have also been deluged with ads about the benefits of the pipeline.
Fortunately, most Americans have a heavy dose of skepticism when it comes to the oil industry. So maybe, just maybe, when people hear the pollsters’ question, they hesitate for a moment and wonder what is all this pipeline fuss really about.
So what can we conclude? I’d wager that if you ask people if they think building a new pipeline will create jobs, they will inevitably say yes. But if you were to provide context and ask them if they wanted to risk their drinking water, greater energy self-reliance, and providing a future for our kids that does not trade off our climate and drinking water to line the pockets of the multi-national oil companies, I suspect they’d say no.
There desperately needs to be an improvement in both poll taking and in media coverage so that there can be a fair and balanced debate about this tar sands mega pipeline. So far, the debate has been anything but balanced and that does the American public a great disservice.
Addendum: On February 6, Politico reported that a Hart poll showed that once independents better understand the pro and con arguments for the tar sands pipeline, they agree with the President's decision to delay the pipeline by a margin of 47% to 36% (Democrats are already on side in strong margins). They are particularly concerned that risks to water supplies from pipeline spills, especially over the heartland's Ogallala aquifer, be addressed. The poll was conducted in late January in Colorado, Michigan, Iowa, and Ohio.
14 Comments so far
Show AllPolls can easily be stuffed. I know this having dealt with polls in some depth and the role statistics play in them. They can be framed in a very biased manner and depend greatly on who's financing them. Only completely independent polls such as Zogby's should be trusted on much of this. They often have hidden agendas as John Pilger would call it.
The problem is that we are constantly faced with "either-or" decisions. When there are only two choices, the reason is that whomever constructed the question is pushing an agenda, and is doing so in a way that the answers will come out on "his side" of the issue.
Never answer a "this or that" question. Ask why there are only two choices, and then ask why the particular ones presented were chosen. Whose oxen are gored? Then walk away.
The framing that the author talks about, is not just confined to the keystone pipeline. Mainstream corporate media does the same sort of spin on foreign policy, employment, the deficit and pretty much every issue we hear about. The only reason broadcast news gives opponents a say '7%' of the time, is to maintain a plausible appearance of being fair and balanced. So while many may be suspicious of what is being served up to them via their media, the same people are oblivious to how and how they're be manipulated or by whom! Simply ask any Tea Party member or die hard, hate radio, listener who is manipulating them, and they will automatically reply that it is the 'Liberal media' in an attempt to 'undermine our freedoms'.
The author also points out examples of watch dogs like Media Matters to show that on rare occasions the public are given the facts, yet a large percentage will choose to ignore the evidence simply because they have been effectively brainwashed to dismiss anything that resembles the 'left wing conspiracy'. It reminds me of a political irony when David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, ran for governor of Louisiana in 1991. He lost, but what was surprising was that ten percent of his votes came from African Americans. My point is that there will always be a sizable minority that vote against their own best interests every time. This same minority, that the U.S. media has been carefully cultivating over decades now, are also the most likely to vote, making the job of true progressives that much more difficult. This is precisely the same dynamic that allowed Hitler to come to power in 1933 (despite having a minority government) and morphed into the greatest disaster of the 20th Century.
One of the greatest achievements corporate America has has these past few years has been their successful infiltration of the public school system by effectively abolishing critical thinking skills, criticism of the media and government in general and an increased concentration on narrow areas of reading, writing and arithmetic to reinforce the corporate need for a semi-skilled and obedient workforce. No longer do children learn about the rise of unions, child exploitation, class warfare, corporate malfeasance or American Imperialism. Instead we concentrate on the 'basics' before either turning them loose after high school to compete for minimum wage service jobs or else to prepare them to go into $100,00 debt for a minor college degree. For this author or anyone else to suspect that a fair and balanced media will replace our current abomination passing itself off as 'legitimate', is obviously unaware of the reach by corporate America to subvert the populace, a campaign that has been effective and all encompassing for quite some time.
Space Cadet: You raise a number of solid points, although I find it curous that your last paragraph targets public education. Granted, as a former teacher, I certainly realize where improvements can be made at all levels. But let's not give the "Privatize the commons" fold any more ammunition!
We're looking at a many-pronged attack on citizens.
All of the following appear to be carefully orchestrated (and planned) chess moves on the geo-political global chess-board. Much of it pertains to what Alan MacDonald so patiently reminds us is consistent with empire.
Consider:
1. The Decimation of Unions
2. The Capture of media... whereby to distort facts, presented only are part of the story with a ready cast on-board to demonize the "Necessary Scapegoats."
3. The build-up (and obscene increases) of funding to the MIC
4. The political pay per view seen in the growth of the Lobbying firms in Washington
5. The celebration of the warrior, male action hero (making it uncool to be thoughtful, rather than ready to demonstrate macho shows of force first)
6. Food that barely qualifies as such, and the net loss of nourishment to a nation's mental and physical health
7. The off-shoring of jobs
8. The collusion of both parties in such things as: planning wars, gutting The Commons, shipping jobs overseas (NAFTA/GATT) deregulating the media, demonizing welfare/Acorn, deregulating Wall St (Glass Steagall ripped apart)
9. The ubiquitous presence of hate radio shock jocks fomenting anger while projecting it at all the least responsible targets
10. The uptick in jingoism as seen in places like Arizona
11. The rise in a strong fundamentalist church network conditioning millions to turn off to science, and follow religious authority figures' teachings
12. Energy policies that are killing nature... along with the rest of us
13. The "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision essentially making bribery more legal and acceptable than ever
14. One administration giving the previous one a pass on breaking covenants of International Law
WHEN you're as willing to note the net effect of all of these retrograde factors, rather than focusing on whether kids in public schools are taught to think critically, then your thesis will be more fair and honest.
Did you forget what it's like to be a teenager? How important the validation of peers is? And those peers are plugged into the MSM/music/movies that reinforce very specific messages. These are based on owning cool things, looking good, projecting sex appeal, and having fun.
The most influential teachers in the world cannot stand up against the tide of commercial messaging and the other covert dis-information tactics modifying the thought processes of today's kids 24/7.
Also consider the attraction to vile and equally violent video games.
Much of Amerika is being fitted not just to produce slow-witted fodder for factories and retail jobs, but more so, to produce soldiers and those ready to march lock-step to a military marching beat and the MIC ethos it supports.
Danger! Will Robinson.
Those depending on jobs supplied by others may see only jobs in the pipeline, but rent seekers see the tar sands in the pipeline as part of the commons to be monopolized. This Canadian crud is a windfall gain for the rent seekers if paid for by only a few jobs in a going-out-of-business sale for Mother Earth.
The framing of the Keystone XL Pipeline issue is only suggested by tar sands and jobs. Instead, the framing must recognize that jobs are part of the economy which, in turn, is part of the ecology. Jobs will be a natural consequence if all are free to engage in work without punitive taxation and misallocation through government bubble blowing via the Fed. But a sharing in the wealth of the earth is only possible if none take from our commons without paying the rent.
Unfortunately, public debate is limited to jobs that are somehow produced despite the punitive taxes on income, payroll, profits, saving, and sales. The pipeline jobs, however, should be blacklisted due to a lack of punitive taxation of tar sands and resultant pollution of our commons. So our common dreams become a nightmare, because we subsidize and tax the economy while subsidizing and not taxing the earth.
What is to prevent other agencies and/or institutions from conducting polls and presenting the problems to the public in accurate and meaningful ways? Why do we wait for the MSM to do the job? Why bother complaining? We know that they are not likely to do anything. Is there any surprise in that?
There should be a stake in this by the solar power industry. Is there not? What about wind power agencies and wave action generation equipment. For that matter, how about electric cars that more and more people want and are already buying?
Another issue is the local economy. Where are people even here on Common Dreams who are talking about how important local business is in terms of real jobs and good pay, not to mention the ripple effect that works to make local economies recession proof? Why is it that people don't use their dollars? What company does not understand money? Show me anything viable and successful and I'll show you an immediate response on the part of big business. I can talk about something in California called Mi Pueblo. I can tell you that Merrill Lynch was darn interested in that company almost immediately. And so it goes. People need to use their money to effect change. Money talks loud and clear and much louder than words.
Enough of the complaining already.
"Come on people, smile on your brother" (your local merchant).
Yes we all can be the media. However I'm not sure we all can be pollsters in any meaningful and objective way which we would like to. As a rule such polls require big money is one disadvantage our side has. . .unless. You and I can just go out to poll people. I have some background, but I haven't done this kind of thing in a while. To do this takes a solid understanding of the methodogly of random sampling and survery reeserch. This isn't just something. a person can pick up in an instant anymore than someone can pick playing a violin in an instant or maybe you can. Maybe you can. I won't make any judgments on that. I'd like to be able to. I have a small busines which provides me with my living in these perilous times. Most people on the progressive end of the spectrum don't have these skills anymore those on the other side do. But the olther side has piles of money to pay to have some big company to do it, and even to stack the deck in their favor in such polls. If I had a billion dollars, I'd do the same for our side to even up things. Currently that's not an option. Sorry!
Glad to see the comment. Thanks.
There are folks out there like George Soros who can pick up the tab. Also there are universities available to do some of the work. There is Sonoma State in Northern California, for example, often doing things just like this. In Santa Rosa nearby, polling is done regularly by local people who received some funding from institutions. The workers are often trained students from the University. This helps to keep the local community up to date on what the local politicians are doing.
Another university in the area is the Dominican University that sponsors all kinds of public forums and information.
Also Unitarian and Quakers chip in money for projects like this. Local public TV stations often provide forums. But just holding local public meetings to discuss such matters can make a difference. Even the tea party in our area does that.
Other would be organizations could and should be unions. Someone has to get this message across. Right now unions seem to have nothing going for them in terms of public efforts except in the Midwest where their survival is at stake. Maybe unions will take the hint from the passage of the right to work law in Indiana. I can get very disgusted with unions for their slothfulness just about as much as the MSM.
"No poll has set this tar sands pipeline in any kind of context"
That's not an isolated situation. The way that kapitalism has been presented to Merkans for many many decades, over and over in the media, and even in the school curriculum, and at the dinner table, has been grotesquely out of context.
I think you could say that out-of-context misrepresentations, coupled with gluttonous fossil fuel consumption, are the two most "active" ingredients in Merkan elites' "Apple Pie" recipe. Give them pie for breakfast/lunch/dinner, daily, monthly, yearly. Tell them it's good. It kills them. Harvest their remains to feed your machine. Speculate in your casino. Harvest more victims.
But, thankfully, Merkans are awakening to the elite rackets that are killing them. Elites are very busy these days inventing new rackets, knowing their old ones are being rendered obsolete. But the people are outracing the elites. We're establishing our local economies, and abandoning the elites' global ekonomy, in larger numbers every day. It's a snowball effect.
>>"Fortunately, most Americans have a heavy dose of skepticism when it comes to the oil industry."<<
Maybe so, but unfortunately this skepticism is NOT enough to make a lot of them question the information put out by the climate change denial industry. And it is certainly nowhere near enough to make them demand serious action on climate change. If a decent majority of the population gives a damn about climate change, the USA would have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol and a more aggressive, comprehensive successor treaty would have been adopted at Copenhagen in 2009 as per the original schedule. And there is no way this Keystone monstrosity could even have been proposed in the first place!
"It's All About the Framing", all right! That is why even people like Bill McKibben have to rely on the support of NIMBY activism from farmers and ranchers, and not rely on the main threat of climate change and the role of consumption, especially of meat and dairy, and the importance of implementing a "cap" or upper limit on greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of mobilizing for a comprehensive set of actions on tackling, global warming, the movement is reduced to fighting individual battles against individual monstrosities. The issues need to be framed this way, invoking the risk to the Ogallala Aquifer (while completely avoiding the over-pumping of water from the very same aquifer to produce meat and dairy), because the people in the US do not yet give much of a damn about global warming and how their lifestyle is directly responsible for it. Blame that also on framing?
I don't mean to be critical of the author, as I can imagine what kind of a difficult job it is to be taking on this "industry". I just checked out her blog on the NRDC site where this article also appears and ALL the comments there seem to be from industry shills. As sickening as it is to think about the role of media in all this, someone has to do the job of highlighting it.
I don't know about Keystone XL, but the original Keystone Pipeline was built by union contractors. It's funny that when the politicos talk about jobs, jobs, jobs, they never mention "union jobs". I'm neither for nor against the XL pipeline, though I think the way the oil is removed from Earth is wrong.
To use this energy commodity to drive job creation for generations instead of for a minute, the tar sands, like the Marcellus Shale deposits, should be viewed as common wealth of the geopolitical territories that hold it within their borders. This energy treasure should be used for the common good of residents within those territories, instead of harvested privately at great risk to the enviornmental common wealth, then exported to support foreign jobs and economies. If we apply to these energy reserves the notion of "local consumption of local treasure"--we reconceptualize the use of this commodity in a manner that will surely create more sustainable jobs and more wealth in the areas that now contain the treasure. Why are Canadians, like Americans, so eager to allow corporate harvesters to extract and rapidly deplete this common treasure by exporting it to support jobs and economic growth elsewhere? Make both the tar sands and Marcellus shale energy available at low cost at or near the sites of extraction and the jobs will come to the source of the energy and stay there as long as the energy is available. Low cost energy is a huge driver of manufacturing and economic growth. Stop exporting that local treasure to support manufacturing jobs and other energy intensive ventures in other parts of the world.
Except, in this case, boblecht, (and in the case of coal mining and a few other activities), the "local" consideration alone is not enough, because the consequences of burning this stuff are global in nature. Certain things appear "local" only because of violent conquest and colonization in the past, and it's best to leave certain things in the ground, under the oceans and in the mountains and forests!
"Local" is no longer a valid argument if the consequences of an action extend far beyond the "local". And this has gone on for far too long.
From Wikipedia:
>>James Hansen notes that in determining responsibility for climate change, the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on climate is not determined by current emissions, but by accumulated emissions over the lifetime of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. By this measure the U.K. is still the largest single cause of climate change, followed by the U.S. and Germany, even though its current emissions are surpassed by the Peoples Republic of China.<<
Check out this bar graph:
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44300000/gif/_44300079_co2_cumulative_emis_203gr.gif
The graph appears in this news story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7143567.stm
You can see Canada among the top few countries that are most responsible on a per capita basis for global warming, both in historical terms as well as due to current emissions. It is time to talk about leaving this stuff entirely in the ground and look for other sources of energy and to understand what true sustainability means, and how to become a good, responsible global citizen. The issue is far more serious than just about local jobs, because the consequences are global in nature.
As both Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky have pointed out for years the US public is a lot more progressive than they are given credit for. 60% or more of Americans preferred Medicare for All instead of the private insurance giveaway, oppose the huge waste of money on endless Wars, support Social Security, want the banksters to pay the price for the financial collapse.
On an issue directly relevant to dramatically reducing US usage and dependence on oil for auto addiction, Transportation for America published poll results which showed that :
===================================
More than four-in-five voters (82 percent) say that “the United States would benefit from an expanded and improved transportation system,” including modes of transportation like rail and buses. An overwhelming majority of voters agree with this statement — no matter where they live. Even in rural America, 79 percent of voters agreed with the statement, despite much lower use of public transportation compared to urban Americans.....
==============================
http://t4america.org/blog/2010/03/30/new-t4-poll-shows-americans-strongly-support-public-transportation-more-walking-and-biking/
But this choice is NEVER presented not even by alleged Environmentalists who
will only talk about electric cars....
As far as the cost of cars consider this excellent summary of
"Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay"...
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/49946