Got really mad while I was reading
this piece by AP staff writer Ron Fournier. It seems like his name turns up on the byline of almost every misleading or slanted AP article I read.
The gist of the article is that AP ran a poll wherein they called voters, asked them their opinion of Bush, told them that 1.2M jobs had been created in the last six months, and then asked, "How do you feel about Bush now?". In other words, push-polling. Misleading push-polling at that, since the jobs factoid ignores the fact that Bush is still 1 million jobs behind where we were the day he took office, and more than six million behind what we would have needed just to keep up with population growth.
So why is the AP carrying Bush's water for him? I wrote them a nastygram to find out, but they (unsurprisingly) haven't responded. The article also contained this gem of a slam on Kerry:
Kerry will try to keep voters focused on the most dismal economic data while fueling their anxieties about interest rates, health care premiums, tuition bills and other costs of living.
Note how the assertion is totally unsourced, and in fact represents nothing other than Mr. Fournier's opinion - but doesn't it make you mad at Kerry? Maybe the AP can add that question to their next push-poll.