02/18/2004 Entry: "Why I can't stand the press"
Posted by Maynard @ 04:21 PM MST

Why I can't stand the press

Headline: Top Democrats lead Bush in poll
Lead Sentence: "Democrat John Kerry holds his largest lead yet over President Bush in a head-to-head match-up among likely voters, a new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll concludes, and rival John Edwards also holds a double-digit lead over the president."
Reality: Nine sentences into the story (i.e. farther than the attention span of most Americans) we find the rest of the story. "The poll indicates Kerry and Edwards hold lesser leads - or no lead at all - when all registered voters are measured."

In other words, USA Today tacitly omitted a key detail in the first sentence that alters the meaning of the headline. The detail was who was asked in the poll, and the answer is not given in the article.

So CNN/USA Today/Gallup is saying that Bush loses to a Democrat when Democrat voters are asked. Duh.

Such is the modern news industry in America today. Woe unto us if we choose to believe everything we read from them. A more complete view of the current race can be found at Zogby, where Bush leads in Red States and Kerry in Blue States.

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