NPR comes in for its fair share of licks around here, and most of them are deserved. But today's "Day to Day" story on public reaction to domestic surveillance and the NPR website's incongruous presentation of the story invites licks like honey invites flies.
On today's edition of NPR's "Day to Day", correspondent Alix Spiegel did a story on the NSA's surveillance of domestic phone records. She says she spoke with 15 people at the National Mall in Washington, 4 or 5 of which were put on the air, and all of the on-air interviewees enthusiastically endorsed the program. One reportedly "pumped his fist in the air" and felt people who felt privacy was important believed that way because "they have something to hide". Another compared the loss of privacy to rationing during World War II. Neither of the two people who strongly objected to the program were put on the air.
More after the jump...
In his intro, host Noah Adams referred to Spiegel's poll as unscientific, and that's an understatement. Fifteen people at one narrow location is hardly a good sample. Besides, Spiegel only mentions one spot on the Mall during her piece, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, so the sample may be even more narrow than she lets on. Anyway, four or five people who pooh-poohed privacy rights shamelessly talked about how we needed to defend ourselves and how this was a sacrifice akin to rationing during WWII. Disagree with these good citizens of Airstrip One, Oceania, and "you've got something to hide."
The NPR website for "Day to Day" was worse. The headline at the page with the streaming feed for the story has the headline "Polls Suggest Americans Approve NSA Monitoring". No scientific poll was mentioned in Spiegel's piece, only Spiegel's unscientific sample of people at the Mall in Washington (and maybe only people at the Vietnam Memorial). Neither Spiegel's piece nor the website mentions polls by USA Today and Newsweek that suggest that Americans are skeptical at best about the NSA program. 53% and 51% against in two polls don't exactly suggest that the public at large is ready to enthusiastically pump its fist in favor of the program.
Aside from this, the question is begged, what does a poll matter on this issue? Even if 99.9999% of Americans favor ripping up the Constitution in favor of the doctrine of Divine Right of Kings tomorrow, that proposition is not a matter for public opinion. Neither is the abrogation of your privacy rights and mine, the opinions of 13 people on the Mall who are all too willing to surrender their rights notwithstanding. Ben Franklin truly was right - They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.