Sunday, November 13, 2005

Stooping to Their Level

After railing at Mister Bush and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley all weekend for lying about having been exonerated of having cooked the Iraq intelligence, I find this headline over at HuffPo:
President's Approval Rating Falls To Record Low

It's a link that takes you to the Newsweek article from November 12 that carries the magazine's latest poll results.

The Newsweek piece carries the headline "Autumn of Discontent." Nowhere does the article refer to "record low ratings." In fact, the piece reports that Mister Bush's present 36 percent approval rating equals the low point of Mister Clinton's popularity, and that the Bush 41, Jimmy Carter, and Richard Nixon all had approval ratings worse than 36 percent at some point in their presidencies.

We might consider HuffPo's "record low" reference to be "true" if we take it to mean a "record low" for Bush 43. But it's pretty obvious that they're sending a message that Mister Bush is at a record low for all presidents since polls have been taken. If they're not lying outright, they're being purposely misleading at best.

The folks at HuffPo have done quite a bit of this sort of thing lately, and I really wish they'd stop it.

1 comment: