Dan Balz

Monday's Washington Post announces their new poll with ABC News with the headline "As gasoline prices rise, president's ratings fall." Reporters Dan Balz and Jon Cohen announce the bad news upfront that "a record number of Americans now give the president 'strongly' negative reviews" on the economy. But you'd have to turn inside for the real numbers, as the reporters clear their throats about the overall trends among the "steadily brightening employment picture."

The Post did note on the front page that "nearly two-thirds" of respondents disapproved of Obama's handling of gas prices (65 percent disapprove, 26 percent approve). On the Post website Monday morning, they encouraged people to read the comments, as they normally do, but with this pro-Obama commenter headline: “1,300+ comments: 'How exactly are rising gas prices Obama's fault?’”

A new Washington Post poll finds, among other things, that a full 70 percent of Americans either believe Barack Obama has "tried but failed" to solve "the major problems facing the country" or has actually "made problems worse." That compares, by the way, with 71 percent of Americans in a December 2008 Pew Center poll who thought the same of outgoing President Bush.

Yet in analyzing the polling data, Post staffers Jon Cohen and Dan Balz buried bad news for the president deep in their page A1 August 11 article and suggested the sour view Americans have on the Congress was the bigger story for the upcoming election season (emphasis mine):

A new survey by The Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School for Public Health found dire news for Democrats: “When asked which party better understands the economic problems that people in the country are having, non-college whites side with the Republicans by a 14-point margin.”

That news is so uncomfortable for media liberals that the Post put that sentence in paragraph 15 of a story they placed on page A-2. The headline on this story by Jon Cohen and Dan Balz was “Non-college whites gloomy about economy: Group is more pessimistic than those with degrees, poll finds.” It wasn't “Non-college whites don't like Obama economic policies.” There's also that finding, in paragraph 13:

Yesterday my colleague Tim Graham noted how the Washington Post failed to report its most recent ABCNews-Washington Post opinion poll on President Obama's signature health care overhaul legislation.

This was despite the fact that the poll showed ObamaCare had fallen to "the lowest level of popularity ever" as ABC reporter Jake Tapper observed.

Today the Post continued to keep its poll findings from the print edition.

Of course, the Post was careful to front-page a story by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen on how, "In poll, many [are] still skeptical of GOP."

Liberal Democrats in the past few weeks have been pounding the message that massive infusions of "secret" money into independently-run political advertising have a detrimental effect on Democrats democracy. The media have done their level best to amplify that complaint.

But is knowing the identity of political advertising donors really a huge issue to swing voters?

By and large, no, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll.

Of course that polling data didn't make it into today's front-page piece by Dan Balz  entitled "Democrats bracing for losses."

Instead it appeared in the print edition on page A6 in Chris Cillizza's "Trail Mix" feature, adapted from a November 1 "The Fix" blog post:

The Washington Post doesn't avoid the bad news for Democrats on Tuesday's front page, but it noticeably tried to hide the worst of it. The headline on the new ABC/Post poll was "Republicans making gains ahead of midterm elections; parties nearly even on trust; Obama's overall rating is at new low, poll finds."

There is no graphic illustration of any poll result -- unlike their misleading GOP-maligning July 13 story. The Post did announce that inside their polls merely "shows Republicans with the edge as independents slide away from the Democrats." But the story by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen saved all the most depressing numbers for inside the paper on A5:

-- Republicans lead Democrats 47 to 45 percent on the basic ballot question, but "among those most likely to vote this fall, the Republican advantage swells to 53 percent to the Democrats' 40 percent."

In today's Washington Post, Dan Balz argues that the "Florida Senate race starts without a clear favorite." While that may be true in some sense, recent polling data has some favorable signs for conservative Republican candidate Marco Rubio.

Yet nowhere in his 20-paragraph story did Balz delve into those poll numbers. Instead, Balz presented the Florida race as complete wild card that is unpredictable due to the three-way nature of the contest:

Gov. Charlie Crist is the man in the middle in Florida's high-stakes race for the Senate, a candidate without a party whose hopes of moving from Tallahassee to Washington depend on his ability to fend off a squeeze play from his Democratic and Republican rivals.

The three-way campaign for the Senate is the latest in a series of important races in Florida - including the 2000 recount that helped define red-blue divisions in America - but with dynamics new to the Sunshine State. 

But a look at recent polling data available on RealClearPolitics.com seems to indicate Rubio went to bed on primary election night in good shape for the general election fight ahead.

Analysts that spend their time critiquing the media normally don't have very good things to say about what they observe these days, but the final segment of Sunday's "Face the Nation" on CBS was a marvelous exception.

Substitute host John Dickerson invited on the network's chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford and the Washington Post's Dan Balz for a refreshingly open and honest discussion of two pivotal legal issues facing our nation: a judge's decision to overturn California's controversial Proposition 8 which banned same-sex marriages, and; whether or not the 14th Amendment should be revised to address illegal immigration.

What ensued was a tremendously informative seven minute report about these two issues without any cheer-leading or accusatory finger-pointing: Crawford gave the facts about both legal matters as she saw them; Balz addressed the political ramifications for both parties as well as the White House, and; Dickerson asked great questions to keep the conversation moving.

With that as pretext, sit back and watch - or read if you're so inclined - the way these kinds of issues should be discussed on a television news program (video follows with transcript and commentary): 

The Washington Post announced bad news for its largely liberal readers in its poll Tuesday morning. The headline said "6 in 10 Americans lack faith in Obama: Congress still held in lower esteem, but poll shows gap narrowing." Those who read the story would wait until the end of paragraph six (just before the jump) to get this liberal-haunting number: "Those most likely to vote in the midterms prefer the GOP over continued Democratic rule by a sizable margin of 56 percent to 41 percent."

But if the Post reader skipped the gray text and went just for the graphics, they’d get the impression that Republicans are worse off than the Democrats: they’d see asked "how much confidence do you have" in the parties, they showed Obama’s "lack faith" number at 58 percent, Democrats in Congress at 68 percent, and Republicans at 72 percent.

But wait: in parentheses it says "percent of voters saying 'just some' or 'none'". (That wasn't bolded in the paper, as it is on the website.) Here’s the rub: deep in the Post's data (question 3), it shows Republicans "just some" number was 43 percent and "none" was 29 percent, while Democrats "just some" number was 35 percent and "none" was 32 percent. So portraying the Republican standing as "worse" than the Democrats (complete with trouble-red emphasis) is misleading at best.

Usually, when a political reporter uses the term "pragmatist," it sounds like a synonym for "centrist," for making the best bipartisan deal you can. So it’s a little jarring to pick up the Sunday Washington Post and see a first-year assessment of President Obama headlined "Testing the promise of pragmatism." But Obama dramatically expanded the scope and power of government, and that’s not centrist. Even the Post home page’s lingo sounds confused:

Voters doubting 'a more pragmatic approach'

Obama is trying to restore confidence in government while proposing the most significant expansion of Washington's role in the economy in a generation.

This headline downplayed the bad polling news the last ABC-WashPost survey uncovered. By 58 to 38 percent, survey respondents said they preferred smaller government and less services to bigger and more. That's gone from +5 to +20 for smaller government since June 2008.

The poll question illustrated on the front page showed that 76 percent thought Obama "will bring needed change to Washington" in January 2008, but now it’s only 50 percent say he will, and 49 percent say he will not.

Eight weeks ago, The Washington Post topped its own front-page with its own ABC-Washington Post poll announcing that the public strongly favored a "public option" in health care, by 57 to 40 percent. Their latest poll is much worse: "Negatives abound in poll," read the subhead. So it was buried on page 6 Wednesday. On the front page instead, a happy-talk headline: "Health bill’s prospects improve as Lieberman signals support."

Tuesday's conservative "Code Red" rally in Washington wasn't buried in the Post. It was nowhere in the Post.

The actual poll story by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen reports that 44 percent support current health-care legislation, and 51 percent disapprove. Approval of Obama’s handling of health-care has gone sour: 44 percent approve, while 53 percent disapprove. But the Post’s front page is still touting "Health care bill’s prospects improve" as their own poll shows a collapse of public support.

This afternoon, the Washington Post's Web site offers readers two looks at how the Democrats and the GOP will proceed following the 2009 elections, but, surprise, surprise, the paper only forsees internecine squabbles for the GOP.

"Republicans revel in wins but ideological fissures loom," the headline to Washington Post staffer Philip Rucker and Perry Bacon's news piece filed at 2:30 p.m. EST today. On the other side of the coin, the Post offered an "analysis" piece from Dan Balz published shortly after 10 a.m. today that posits that the "Contests serve as warning to Democrats: It's not 2008 anymore."

Even before delving into the content of the articles, it's clear by the  labeling that the Post sees the GOP's pending "ideological fissures" as a matter of objective news reporting, while the Democratic postmortem is a matter of informed "analysis," not hard news.

For their part, Rucker and Bacon aimed, like others in the mainstream media -- click here, here, and here --  to gin up an ominous narrative for the GOP party-wide from the New York 23rd congressional district saga:

The Washington Post touted a new poll on Tuesday that popular support is increasing for a government-run "public option" health care system – just as liberal Democrats try to push that into the Senate Finance Committee bill. The headline was "Public option gains support: Clear majority now backs plan." So it’s not surprising, as Ed Morrissey found at Hot Air, that the Post is stuffing its poll sample with a few extra Democrats:

The sampling comprises 33% Democrats, as opposed to only 20% Republicans. That thirteen-point spread is two points larger than their September polling, at 32%/21%. More tellingly, it’s significantly larger than their Election Day sample, which included 35% Democrats to 26% Republicans for a gap of nine points, about a third smaller than the gap in this poll. Of course, that’s when they were more concerned about accuracy over political points of view.

The Post’s poll (illustrated by a chart) found respondents favored a public option "to compete with" private insurance by a margin of 57 to 40 percent. But even with the polling sample tilted toward the Democrats, some less favorable findings weren’t in the headline, as Dan Balz and Jon Cohen reported:

Terry Gross, the female Philadelphia-based host of the National Public Radio show Fresh Air, notoriously tangled with Bill O’Reilly in 2003 by asking O'Reilly to respond to Al  Franken's attacks on him (two weeks after a giggly interview with Franken himself). A July 1 interview with Washington Post political reporter Dan Balz on the (apparently hopeless) state of the Republican Party caused her to pick up the left-wing bloggers’ attack on Rush Limbaugh as someone who says "extreme wild things" and damages the GOP:

GROSS: You know, I always wonder what Republicans -- and I know you can't really generalize here because every Republican is different -- but what Republicans think of right wing talk radio and TV. Take Rush Limbaugh, for instance. He says some pretty extreme wild things. He's not running for office. He's not taking responsibility for running the country. He's, I mean, he's a talk show host and what he needs is an audience and ratings and saying extreme things is very good for getting audience and ratings.

On the occasion of President Obama reversing course on plans to release photographs "depicting the abuse of detainees," a decision wildly unpopular on the hard left, The Washington Post's lead story Thursday was "As Cheney Seizes Spotlight, Many Republicans Wince." There's only one obvious problem with Dan Balz's front-pager. Those "many Republicans" are too timid to attach their names to all the wincing.

Balz is left with a weak story with on-the-record Cheney defenders, on-the-record Democrat Cheney-bashers, and Republican "strategists" who "are not willing to take him on in public."

Question for the Post: how do we know these "Republicans" aren't strategists for Arlen Specter? We don't. They're anonymous. How many is "many" if they're too afraid to go public? We're left with quotes like this:

On Sunday’s Face the Nation on CBS, host Bob Schieffer talked to Washington Post reporter Dan Balz about Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama and Balz argued: "Well I think it's obviously significant. I don't think endorsements ultimately mean that much, but there are two, I think, important things that happened with his endorsement of Senator Obama...the criticism of McCain for picking Governor Palin as his running mate, he said explicitly he did not think she was ready. This is something that is beginning to become almost a chorus in some parts of the Republican Party."

On Monday’s CBS Early Show, Schieffer offered almost identical analysis of Powell’s endorsement: "Well, I've never thought endorsements are game-changers but this just adds to the good news that Barack Obama's been getting lately...what Colin Powell said yesterday and why it was so riveting to hear him, he was saying aloud what a lot of Republicans are saying privately, I think, or at least what I've heard some Republicans tell me. They think the pick of Sarah Palin reflects on John McCain's judgment, they think the campaign has turned too nasty and is not inclusive."

Employing the usual liberal assumption that Republicans are always nastier at attack politics, CBS Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer suggested on Sunday morning that Barack Obama has yet to "go negative" in this campaign and "some" say he needs to "climb off the mountaintop and get down here and mix it up."

Did he miss all Obama's talk of Bush-induced "economic disaster" on Saturday? But then Schieffer suggested that Joe Biden's going to have to be Obama's spear chucker – well, "spear guy" – and he might not be able to attack McCain since "they are such close friends."

Did he not hear the "seven kitchen tables" crack in Springfield on Saturday? This talk about timid Democrats came after Schieffer asked his Democrat guests to unload on the controversy over McCain's multiple houses.

Here's something you don't see every day: an Associated Press writer actually publishing something negative about a Democrat...let alone one named Obama.

But, there it was Saturday, with a headline even more curious: "Analysis: Biden Pick Shows Lack of Confidence."

The Obamessiah lacks confidence? Such wrote Ron Fournier (emphasis added, photo courtesy AP):

For months, the mainstream media has obsessed with the evils of the "right wing attack machine." Recently, CBS bizarrely labeled attacks on Obama’s campaign financing flip flop "swift boating." ABC’s George Stephanopoulos even defended the Obama campaign’s discrimination against Muslims to "combat the issue" of false rumors that Obama is a Muslim.

While much of the mainstream media frets about the alleged GOP slime machine, they ignore the much larger, more heavily financed true smear machine from the left. The Politico reports that far left blogger John Aravosis, who also humiliates those who do not fit his brand of liberalism, is now attacking McCain’s Vietnam War record (ironically is exactly the outrage directed at the "swift boat" veterans)

On Tuesday night's "Hardball", Chris Matthews took offense to radio talk show host Bill Cunningham's criticism of Barack Obama, during a John McCain rally, as he called the comments "rotten business" and wondered "Is this now gonna creep into the debate, the discussion? This ethnic stuff and whatever?"

The following exchange occurred on the February 26 edition of "Hardball:"

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well let's take a look at, we had some really rotten business today. Here's radio talk show host Bill Cunningham at a John McCain rally today.

Liberalism is dominant in the Democratic Party, the "progressive wing" and the "Net roots" are triumphant. But in confirming that fact with a Dan Balz "news analysis," The Washington Post used headlines on Thursday morning's front page that beat around the bush (or Bush). On page one, it was "Choosing a Candidate, and More: For Democrats, Party’s Tone and Image at Stake." Inside the A section, the headline after the jump was also vague: "Democrats Also Choose a Style of Leadership." The lede is clear, buried inside in paragraph seven:

Two Democrats who do not always see eye to eye on issues agree that there is substantial unity in the party on the big questions.

"The big arguments of the last years have been won by progressives, partly in response to the populist outrage against Bush," said Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America's Future.

At the top center spot of Wednesday's front page -- above those debating Republicans -- The Washington Post spotlights its interview with Hillary Rodham Clinton. The headline is "Clinton Cites Lessons of Partisanship: Senator Says She's Best Equipped to Unite America." (Washingtonpost.com changed its header to "Clinton Cites Her Resilience.")

Since when has Hillary been either a uniter, or a centrist? Post reporters Anne Kornblut and Dan Balz offered little skepticism (and no account of her consistently liberal voting record) in their account of her remarks, summed up with this: "I intend to win in November 2008, and then I intend to build a centrist coalition in this country that is like what I remember when I was growing up."