Newsmax had an interesting item this evening about a CNN/Opinion Research poll released Friday. The poll shows that "Americans views on the state of the nation are turning increasingly sour." Specifically, "Fifty-nine percent say things are going badly, up nine points from April." The inverse of that, i.e., the 41% who feel that things are going well, is "the lowest that number has been in CNN polling since February 2012."
One would think that this news would be prominently displayed at CNN's U.S. home page, given that as of 10 p.m. the related story was less than 12 hours old. Well, it isn't.
As seen here, the story is nowhere to be found on that home page.
Additionally, if one goes to the home page of CNN's Political Ticker blog, today's "Gut Check," a list of today's posts, features the story about the poll with the following verbiage:
NEW CNN/ORC POLL: ON BLACK FRIDAY, A PESSIMISTIC VIEW OF THE ECONOMY … Americans view on the state of the economy is turning increasingly sour, according to a new CNN/ORC International Poll. The survey indicates that less than a quarter of the public says that economic conditions are improving, while nearly four in ten say the nation's economy is getting worse.
That seems like an exercise in burying the lede, which is that nearly six in ten think that things overall are going badly, and in avoiding any mention of the fact that the majority of Americans are dissatisfied.
There's more. Clicking on the link to the story about the poll at "Gut Check" leads to the following:
As readers can see in the address bar, an extra space "somehow" got inserted into the URL, causing the "%20" character to occur and ultimately a "not found" error. Readers of "Gut Check" still won't find out that a strong majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the nation's overall situation unless they're astute enough look for an error in the address bar, and then smart enough about web addresses to delete the "%20" characters. If they somehow know to do all of that, they'll get to the story.
CNN hasn't gotten around to fixing the "Gut Check" link in over five hours since it went up at 5 p.m.
It's almost as if CNN doesn't people to get the full scoop on its own poll. Given their general outlook, I wouldn't doubt it.
Finally, as totally expected in a negative story about the country's direction, CNN's underlying article doesn't once mention Barack Obama's name.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
