By Hugo Martin, Los Angeles Times –
LOS ANGELES — Despite all the griping over full-body searches of children and senior citizens, most Americans think the Transportation Security Administration is doing either a good or excellent job of handling security at airports.
During a recent Gallup poll, 54 percent of Americans said the agency in charge of security at airports is doing a good or excellent job, with an additional 30 percent saying the TSA does only a fair job.
Only 12 percent of those surveyed said the TSA does a poor job.
In fact, the opinion of the TSA is slightly better among Americans who have recently flown, with 57 percent of those who have flown in the last year saying the agency does a good or excellent job, according to the survey.
And how effective are the TSA screening procedures? A total of 85 percent of those surveyed said the procedures are either extremely effective, very effective or somewhat effective at preventing acts of terrorism, according to the survey.
In the last few months, Congress has held several hearings to discuss ways to improve the TSA’s image. But the poll suggests Congress may want to work on its own image. The latest Gallup numbers show that Congress now has an approval rating of only 16 percent.
This headline is a complete lie! Only 41% found them effective or about 4 in 10 people.
The Gallup poll results show that most Americans think TSA is useless in protecting them. The poll says that 58% found TSA less than effective. Since security effectiveness is their only responsibility how can this be construed as favorable for TSA? Why is the media focusing only on the “job” data?
Gallup said that 54% of Americans “think” TSA does a decent job while 44% don’t think they do a good job, hardly a ringing endorsement. The poll has a 4% margin indicating that Americans are largely divided on whether the screeners are doing a good job or not. It also shows TSA’s PR campaign has been more successful than their workers.
Why was it necessary to add the adjective “only” to the fair performance category when “fair” would have been sufficient? This creates a bias by implying “only” is bad in the question and contaminates the result.
The Gallup question on TSA job performance was severely flawed and biased. There were two options that gave TSA a clearly favorable rating, Excellent and Good but only one that gave them a clearly unfavorable rating, Poor. The Only Fair category was somewhat neutral and offered a substitute for an unfavorable rating.
So if a plane explodes because of TSA incompetence but America thinks the screeners “do a good job” that makes it okay?
Gallup’s data shows that 48% of respondents have not flown in a year or more and are not familiar with the agency or its procedures and 75% seldom if ever fly.
Another interpretation of Gallup’s data is that 75% of Americans are non-fliers or rarely use airlines and are unaware of TSA’s poor performance record or just don’t care since it doesn’t affect them.
Maybe Gallup will comment on why TSA’s poor effectiveness wasn’t the headline in the press and why the media favorably reported the performance results.
And how does anyone explain how only 122 people who flew more than five times in the past year suffice for anyone to conclude that millions of frequent fliers view TSA favorably?
It’s funny that the pool came out he same day this comes on the day when two more TSA screeners in Atlanta were indicted for smuggling drugs through security in a FBI sting. Twelve TSA workers have been charged with smuggling contraband in twenty months
Media pandering to an incompetent agency that can’t rid itself of criminals is jeopardizing airline safety, not helping it.