Two-Thirds of Americans Think Iran Already Has the Bomb

Remember Saddam Hussein’s dreaded weapons of mass destruction, the ones we could never quite manage to find? Well it looks like they have finally shown up — in Iran. Most Americans were convinced that Saddam had the bomb, despite the lack of any evidence. Now, according to the latest CNN poll, 71% of us “think Iran currently has nuclear weapons.”

The poll relied on an unusually small sample. So let’s assume that it was off by the full margin of error, 4.5%. That leaves fully two-thirds of us believing something that the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors say is not true, something that no respectable U.S. news source has ever said is true, something that not even TV’s neocon talking heads claim to be true.

Why would two-thirds of us make such an egregious and dangerous mistake?  Unfortunately, as usual, the pollsters rest content with superficialities and don’t bother to ask the important questions, like “Why do you think that?” So we are left to speculate. A number of possibilities come to mind, and all of them might be part of the answer.

Many Americans may well say, “Of course there’s no evidence of Iran’s bomb. They’re hiding it! Their government is run by lying, cheating, deceitful bastards who certainly won’t let anyone find out the truth.” It doesn’t take much demonizing of foreign leaders to convince a big chunk of the U.S. public that those leaders are capable of just about anything and guilty of just about everything. The Bush administration’s demonizing of Saddam taught us that.

So when the most respectable of news sources, the New York Times, headlined last January, “Iran Shielding Its Nuclear Effort in Maze of Tunnels,” and the rest of the mass media repeated the story without question, that big cynical chunk of the public probably felt no need to read past the headline. If the “evildoers” are hiding their “nuclear effort” in tunnels, isn’t it obvious that they must have an atomic bomb in there?

Even if the Iranian leaders were not so demonized, the way much of the public takes in the news would reveal a lot. Most get their news from television, a medium which is not exactly known for attention to detail. Even on the rare occasions that TV offers detail, too few viewers pay much attention to it. TV is more or less the background sound-and-video track to American life. The other major information source — local newspapers — are also sadly thin on detail, especially when it comes to foreign news. And too few readers ever get past the headlines.

Media psychologists have discovered a basic rule that may be true for all of us, but is especially true for those who don’t pay close attention:  Unconsciously, people tend to process the key terms but ignore the negatives.  When they read or hear, “X is not Y,” they remember the link between X and Y, but forget the “not.”

So even if every headline back in 2003 had said “Saddam has NO weapons of mass destruction,” most people would have remembered only “Saddam” and “WMD,” and the Bush lies would still have prevailed.

Similarly, the steady drumbeat of news linking “Iran” and “nuclear weapons” has now created an indelible mental association. That, I suspect, is the main reason two-thirds of us believe what there is no empirical reason to believe.

If I’m right, the root of the problem is the media obsession with Iran’s nuclear energy program and the constant front-page speculation that it masks a nuclear weapons program.  This latest poll should remind mass media editors how dangerous it is to treat suspicions and rumors as if they were hard news. The editors make that mistake because they let others — politicians, lobbyists, and think tanks — set the news agenda.

Progressive news sources can make the same mistake. A sizeable portion of progressive news is dedicated to refuting the untruths and distortions of the mass media. That’s a necessary task. But it’s all too easy to overdo it, to let the task of refuting dominate so much that the progressive media end up reinforcing the mass media script.

The new CNN poll is a sobering reminder that it’s equally important for progressive media to create their own script, to decide on their own what really matters, to cover stories that the mass media ignore — like, for example, this CNN poll itself. Such a shocking revelation of public ignorance on a matter of grave importance should be front-page news everywhere. But the people who decide for the general public what counts as news are likely to let it go completely overlooked. It’s up to progressive alternative news outlets to make it big news.

Oh yes, the same poll does give some small comfort. Though a large majority of the respondents think the Iranians have the bomb, “only” 23% say we should “take military action right now.”  63% want the U.S. to “use economic and diplomatic efforts only.” But the number who want military action has nearly doubled in the last four years, while the number who think the U.S. needs to take no action against Iran has fallen by half.

It’s the volatile, ill-informed U.S. public, not the imagined Iranian bomb, that bears careful watching.