The next morning, ABC's "Good Morning America" repeated the poll's finding. On March 17, however, as conservative Republicans in Congress announced that they would try to intervene on Terri's behalf by passing legislation, it became clear that the story was morphing from a legal and ethical one into a political one. That night ABC's "World News Tonight" covered the story, but suddenly any references to the network's own poll had disappeared. The next night the same program opened with three straight reports about the day's developments in the Schiavo story, this time including a brief on-screen graphic highlighting the 87 percent poll result.

Meanwhile, as of Sunday the Washington Post had not yet published the results of a poll it paid for in any of the nearly dozen stories it ran regarding Schiavo over the previous seven days. For Post readers, the data simply did not exist.

And the Post was not alone. During the same time span the Los Angeles Times ran 10 stories on Schiavo. None mentioned any poll results indicating how one-sided the nationwide debate has been, with so many Americans opposed to the position Congress is taking. The same is true of the Chicago Tribune (11 Schiavo stories, but no mention of polls) and the New York Times (10 stories, also with no specific mention of poll results). The Baltimore Sun, however, deserves credit for its story March 20 that referred, right in the fifth paragraph, to the ABC News/Washington Post survey. Two days earlier the St. Petersburg Times included an extensive breakdown of polling data on the Schiavo story. Those papers were virtually alone among major dailies in elevating the issue, according to a search of the Nexis electronic database.

On March 20 the New York Times published an article on the issue that contained a baffling reference to polls: The paper noted that Democrats had "pointed to public opinion polls that show support for Mr. Schiavo's right to decide his wife's fate." That was peculiar for two reasons: One, the Times never bothered to inform readers about what the poll results were. (If they had, readers might have realized that "support for Mr. Schiavo" was putting it mildly.) And two, why couldn't the Times have pointed to the polls -- and their results -- itself, instead of relying on "Democrats" to do so?

"Baffling" is also the only word to describe the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article this past Sunday that reported Americans are "split about 60 percent to 40 percent in favor of letting Schiavo die" (emphasis added). The paper then referred to a Fox News poll from "last year" that was "typical," in which 61 percent of registered voters said they would remove the tube and let her die; [and] 22 percent would leave it in place." If that poll was typical, why did the paper contradict itself by reporting that Americans are actually split 60-40 on the issue?

Television coverage was even more barren. NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday featured its weekly roundtable of journalists, who discussed the Schiavo issue. Yet neither host Tim Russert nor guests Ron Brownstein (Los Angeles Times), David Broder (Washington Post), John Harwood (Wall Street Journal) or Gwen Ifill (PBS) ever mentioned any polls on the Schiavo case. That show was the model, across the dial, for television coverage over the weekend: Avoid the polls and -- indirectly -- any suggestion that Congress was acting in an radical manner.

Late on Sunday night, CNN's Bill Schneider did at least address the topic of polls, highlighting the Fox News survey that found that Americans by a margin of more than 2-to-1 (59-24) would remove Schiavo's feeding tube. (Schneider ignored the ABC News/Washington Post poll from five days earlier that found 87 percent would want their feeding tube taken out if they were in Schiavo's position.) But Schneider then tried to brush off the results, insisting "polls do not tell the whole story" of the Schiavo debate.

Polls may not tell the whole story, but they tell an important part -- a part the press has ignored.

This story has been corrected since it was originally published.

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