UPDATED: The Washington Times vs. reality
May 06, 2009 8:58 am ET by Eric Boehlert
We told you it was no contest.
Last week CF called out the Times for its bizarre, fact-free editorial that claimed Obama's job approval ratings were "in the basement" and that he was historically unpopular. True Alice-in-Wonderland stuff since recent polling data suggest the exact opposite about the president's popularity.
Well, it only took a week but the Times finally walked back that nonsense:
We hereby retract our April 28 editorial "Barack's in the basement" because we misapplied several polling comparisons of various presidents after their first 100 days in office.
"Misapplied several polling comparisons"? That's being generous. In truth, the entire piece was invented out of whole cloth.
BTW, tho, the WT is spot-on with their correction. Although they probably only walked it back because I am sure that Gallup objected to their cross-pollination of polling data.
Gallup has a history of getting upset over use of OTHER polling data to compare against their historic data.
It is a misuse of stastical emperical data and they don't like it!