Stupid Polling Tricks
This is just piling on:
Dr. Uri Lebel of the Ben Gurion Institute, Beer Sheva University, has found that another problem.. Israeli PR. During the poll, entitled "the management of Israeli PR during the second Lebanon war," members of six groups were asked to watch video recordings of Israeli PR in Israel and abroad, and to answer questions. Lebel says he held polls in the past on issues of strategic press, political psychology, and army-media relations. The result of his latest poll show that Israeli PR was so lacking, that in my cases the public was forced to rely on the reports of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
See kids, this is how social science rots your brain. Of course right now Israelis are so disgusted with their leadership that they'll give videos of Nasrallah higher marks than videos of Israeli leaders. When we watch tapes of Peretz now, it's not like we believe anything he says. Because we know how it turns out. For instance, when you see a tape of confident Israeli general saying "we're going to push up to the Litani tomorrow", of course you give it low marks for trustworthiness - you know it turned out not to be true.
Also, this is a cheap shot:
"[Nasrallah] was the first to announce the deaths of Israeli soldiers and the sad circumstances which led to them." He added: "This isn't the first time that a bereaved mother found out the truth of the death of her son in recordings released by Hizbullah, where a totally different picture is shown to what the IDF and its spokespeople have provided."
Of course Nasrallah can get that information out there first - he doesn't have to go through layers of military censors. Military censors that are, presumably, there for a reason - sensitivity to the families being not the least of them. As for the another thing - the dark insinuation that the IDF lies about what happens in the battlefield because Nasrallah said something else - the reason he has to imply it instead of saying it is because it's untenable. Israel is a very small country - the IDF can't really cover up what happens in the field because there's no way it would stay a secret.
Speaking of being unable to keep secrets, that's the real reason that this poll is kind of pointless. Israelis don't get battlefield information from Israel or Hezbollah: they get it from soldiers in the field with cell phones. Israelis often knew about battlefield deaths 12 hours before the military censors released the information.
There's an easy way to test these results: do a poll asking Israelis to evaluate the degree to which they believe the following statements (not true / unlikely to be true / likely to be true / true). Put a series of factual statements on the poll, half of them factual reports from the Israeli media and half of them from Nasrallah, without indicated who said what. How many people do you think are going to put anything but "not true" next to claims like 'Hezbollah has killed thousands of Israelis and are covering it up' or 'only a dozen Hezbollah fighters have been killed'? Or 'negotiations are ongoing to free Ron Arad', for that matter. Israelis don't believe a single word that any politician in any party is saying (with the possible exception of Bibi - hmm...) But that doesn't mean Israelis have suddenly developed faith in Hezbollah's casualty figures. Don't be stupid.
Dr. Uri Lebel of the Ben Gurion Institute, Beer Sheva University, has found that another problem.. Israeli PR. During the poll, entitled "the management of Israeli PR during the second Lebanon war," members of six groups were asked to watch video recordings of Israeli PR in Israel and abroad, and to answer questions. Lebel says he held polls in the past on issues of strategic press, political psychology, and army-media relations. The result of his latest poll show that Israeli PR was so lacking, that in my cases the public was forced to rely on the reports of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
See kids, this is how social science rots your brain. Of course right now Israelis are so disgusted with their leadership that they'll give videos of Nasrallah higher marks than videos of Israeli leaders. When we watch tapes of Peretz now, it's not like we believe anything he says. Because we know how it turns out. For instance, when you see a tape of confident Israeli general saying "we're going to push up to the Litani tomorrow", of course you give it low marks for trustworthiness - you know it turned out not to be true.
Also, this is a cheap shot:
"[Nasrallah] was the first to announce the deaths of Israeli soldiers and the sad circumstances which led to them." He added: "This isn't the first time that a bereaved mother found out the truth of the death of her son in recordings released by Hizbullah, where a totally different picture is shown to what the IDF and its spokespeople have provided."
Of course Nasrallah can get that information out there first - he doesn't have to go through layers of military censors. Military censors that are, presumably, there for a reason - sensitivity to the families being not the least of them. As for the another thing - the dark insinuation that the IDF lies about what happens in the battlefield because Nasrallah said something else - the reason he has to imply it instead of saying it is because it's untenable. Israel is a very small country - the IDF can't really cover up what happens in the field because there's no way it would stay a secret.
Speaking of being unable to keep secrets, that's the real reason that this poll is kind of pointless. Israelis don't get battlefield information from Israel or Hezbollah: they get it from soldiers in the field with cell phones. Israelis often knew about battlefield deaths 12 hours before the military censors released the information.
There's an easy way to test these results: do a poll asking Israelis to evaluate the degree to which they believe the following statements (not true / unlikely to be true / likely to be true / true). Put a series of factual statements on the poll, half of them factual reports from the Israeli media and half of them from Nasrallah, without indicated who said what. How many people do you think are going to put anything but "not true" next to claims like 'Hezbollah has killed thousands of Israelis and are covering it up' or 'only a dozen Hezbollah fighters have been killed'? Or 'negotiations are ongoing to free Ron Arad', for that matter. Israelis don't believe a single word that any politician in any party is saying (with the possible exception of Bibi - hmm...) But that doesn't mean Israelis have suddenly developed faith in Hezbollah's casualty figures. Don't be stupid.
