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Dan Rather Spins the Polls - Again!10/27/2003 The October 2 poll results were the lead story on CBS Evening News. Rather teased the story by proclaiming, over a graphic of President Bush labeled 'Declining Confidence', "Tonight in a new poll the American people indicate declining confidence in President Bush on the economy and Iraq." He then introduced the story by John Roberts with this: "A CBS News/New York Times poll out tonight indicates President Bush has increasing problems with public confidence in his leadership. With the economy struggling, jobs hard to come by and American soldiers in Iraq dying almost every day, support for the President, trust and belief in the job he's doing, are falling." John Roberts provided a full rundown of the juicy details, highlighting that voters were evenly split between President Bush and a generic, un-named Democrat (44% each). Fast forward three weeks to October 22. The president's numbers have shown some nice improvement: Approval rating up 3 points to 54%, confidence in his ability to handle a foreign crisis was up 8 percentage points, and now he could beat the same generic Democrat 46% to 34%. But why should CBS spoil the joy of so many Democrats by letting the truth slip? Dan Rather gave this poll a whole 26 seconds of air time. "A new CBS News poll indicates most Americans believe the results of the war in Iraq were not worth its costs. 42 percent said the war was worth it, 52 percent said it wasn't. In August, respondents were evenly split [at 46 percent]. 49 percent of those answering the new poll approve of President Bush's handling of Iraq. President Bush's overall approval rating is still a relatively strong 54 percent." Short, sweet and buried in the fourth story slot. Meanwhile, somebody at CBS News showed an ability to read polls and wrote a nice story for CBSNews.com entitled "Bush Job Approval Edges Back Up". This story included the more positive details for the president. All this leads me to recall that President Clinton's approval rating tended to hover in the 50's throughout most of his presidency and yet the media made much ado over the immense popularity of their hero-president. Hhhhmmmm… Join me in asking Dan Rather for more balance in his poll reporting. The contact information is below. Dan Rather Phone 212-975-3691 or 202-457-4385 Read more here: CBS Ignores Bush's Bounce Back in the Polls; Net had Stressed Decline When you feel your personal media bias tolerance gauge rising into the red zone, don't throw stuff at the TV screen! Send your suggestion to outrage@fairpress.org! Each week, one hideous example of media bias will be selected for closer examination. Hmmmmmm . . .
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