The Non-Skeptical Journalist
Here’s another one of those Handy Obama Facts I’m sure you’ll be seeing again, courtesy of the Washington Post.
No president has begun his term with so broad a wave of public confidence — 78 percent approval in the most recent Gallup poll.
I have no idea how the reporter is defining “broad wave”, but if we use approval ratings, that statement is wrong. The first Gallup poll listed for Harry Truman, had his approval rating at 87 percent. The second, taken four months later, was still above 80 percent. Lyndon Johnson started his term at 78 percent, same as Obama.
Both Truman and Johnson took over for men who died in office, though. So if the WaPo had claimed that President Obama had the highest level of support of any elected president, it would have been correct. But that’s not what the article said.
So much for all those fact-checkers, huh? The thing is, you don’t have to be a highly-educated professional journalist to get stuff like this right. You just have to be a little bit skeptical. I’m not sure where Mr. Gellman got the idea to write that sentence, but I don’t believe he thought it up himself. He likely heard it from someone else and figured it would tie in nicely with the overall “Obama is super-great!” theme of his story.
My instinct when I hear that something is the greatest (or the worst) ever, is to make sure it’s true. I would expect that to be the default behavior of any journalist. Apparently it’s not Mr. Gellman’s instinct, nor is it the instinct of any of the editors who reviewed the story. I can’t help but wonder if they would have checked that fact a bit more carefully if the President has been someone else.
When we conservatives talk about media bias, this is the kind of stuff we’re talking about. It’s amazing how incurious the MSM gets when the supposed facts paint fellow progressives in the most flattering colors.
Other Posts of Interest:
Category: Oh, THAT liberal media., President Barack Obama
