On this blog, I like to talk about media trends and issues or, when it comes to particular stories or patterns, call out factual inaccuracies or mischaracterizations. I try to reserve my “bias anger” for truly outrageous instances.

Case in point:

WASHINGTON – President Bush is making selective use of an opinion poll when he tells people that Iraqis are increasingly upbeat. The same poll that indicated a majority of Iraqis believe their lives are going well also found a majority expressing opposition to the presence of U.S. forces, and less than half saying Iraq is better off now than before the war.

Speaking of selectively citing poll data, AP puts right in the lead that the poll “found a majority expressing opposition to the presence of U.S. forces.” But AP buries at the bottom the poll’s findings that “only one-quarter of respondents wanted American troops to leave right away.”

Thanks for the tip goes to MB reader KAR, who writes:

Some points:
1) This is of course an attempt to spin the
President’s speech rather than report on it. An actual news story would have included quotes from opposition politicians and activists regarding the poll, rather than the reporter themselves feeling the need to assert that things aren’t that grand in Iraq.
2) There’s no “analysis” or “opinion” attached to the
story. Yet, any assertion that Bush is “leaving out the bad news” of the poll is necessarily an opinion or analysis piece, because the poll has much to suggest
that the Iraqi people are, to use the article’s words “increasingly upbeat.” That Bush left out some facts you find salient is not the rebuttal of the President’s
assertion the article implies.
3) The AP and many media outlets regularly ignore good news from Iraq. [emp. mine] The coverage of last weeks election by major media outlets was paltry compared to the “2,000th casualty story”. For AP to feel the need to put out an analysis story to point out that Bush decided not to focus on the negatives in the poll, is a shade hypocritical. I look forward to the AP analysis of its own coverage of Iraq, analysis that includes many of the stories you have missed or ignored to continue to portray Iraq as another Vietnam, despite the massive historical and geopolitical ignorance such a comparison reveals.
Of course, I know such analysis will not be forthcoming, not in any meaningful quantity.
Media types pooh-pooh accusations of media bias, and
then wonder why the status of reporters in this country as trustworthy professionals continues to plummet. It’s simple really. If you can’t be honest
and fair with your political opponents, readers will stop expecting you to be honest and fair, period.