9/11 Commission report

This was emailed to me last week from the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR, the survey research and public opinion professional organization):

On page 341 of the report, it states "As best we can determine, neither in 2000 nor in the first eight months of 2001 did any polling organization in the United States think the subject of terrorism sufficiently on the minds of the public to warrant asking a question about it in a major national survey." This is completely incorrect. The IPOLL database of the Roper Center includes over 40 questions asked by 14 different organizations, including NORC, Gallup, CBS, NBC, and the Pew Center to name just a few. An example of what was asked and an item that shows that terrorism was on the "minds of the public" is the following question from the 2000 General Social Survey of the National Opinion Research Center (2-5/2000):
Are the following threats to the United States greater, about the same, or less today than they were 10 years ago?
                        % Greater Threat
     A. Spying by US citizens for foreign governments 30.7
     B. Spying by foreign agents 34.6
     C. Terrorism by US citizens 49.8
     D. Terrorism by foreigners 64.6
     E. Stealing US advanced technology and trade secrets by foreigners 51.9
     F. Nuclear war 30.5
          N=1403
Thus, we see that in early 2000 the public thought that foreign terrorism was the threat that had grown the most since 1990.

This, I think, is just more support for the assertion that the media was much less concerned with the threat of terrorism before September 11, 2001 than was the American public. The media's immediate dismissal of the war in Iraq and of Bush's handling of the larger war on terror could make the case that they still underestimate the threat.