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CNN Caught Falsifying Results of Abortion Poll

By Gudrun Schultz

UNITED STATES, May 15, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - CNN covered up poll results showing a majority of respondents were pro-life, blogger Joel Johannesen accused in a posting on ProudToBeCanadian.ca.

CNN conducted the massive poll, released on May 9th, which covered wide-ranging issues with an anti-conservative bent. Question 43 addressed abortion, asking respondents, “With respect to the abortion issue, would you consider yourself to be pro-choice or pro-life?”

The largest percentage--50 percent--of respondents indicated they considered themselves to be pro-life, compared to 45 percent who said they considered themselves  to be pro-choice.

That question was not discussed in CNN’s coverage of the poll. Despite citing response percentages for questions dealing with issues such as the Iraq war, national health insurance and economics, CNN glossed over the abortion response by stating that “Americans are divided over abortion rights” and “abortion-rights opponents have intensity on their side.”

“People who describe themselves as pro-life are twice as likely to say the issue will be extremely important to them than people who call themselves pro-choice,” CNN stated.

The news source also failed to report that 66 percent of those questioned said the government should make partial birth abortion illegal, compared to just 28 percent who said the procedure should be legal.

Those results confirmed the findings from an April poll conducted by NBC/News Wall Street Journal, which found 53 percent of respondents were in favour of the Supreme Court decision to uphold a ban on partial birth abortion. Thirty-four percent of respondents were opposed to the ban.

A NewsBusters report on pro-abortion bias in the media pointed to NBC’s Brian Williams statement that “most Americans believe a woman has a right to an abortion,” as a clear example of misleading media coverage. A Washington Post poll conducted in February found only 16 percent of Americans support legal abortion in all circumstances.

The CNN poll questioned 1,028 adults in telephone interviews conducted May 4-6. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Read blog coverage:
http://www.proudtobecanadian.ca/blog/index/weblog/6699/

See CNN poll results:
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/05/09/rel6e.pdf

Read CNN poll coverage:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/09/schneider.poll.issues/index.html

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