We noted yesterday how Politico completely botched its story about Obama's job approval rating going down, based on the latest data from a USA Today/Gallup survey. In fact, Obama's job approval rating went up three points in that poll between May and June, but Politico pretended it went down.

How hard is it to read polling results, right?

Well, after reading Gallup's own write-up about its own polling data, we sort of understand why Politico got the story wrong, because Gallup itself seemed to go out of its way to ignore the fact that Obama's overall job approval rating went up between May and June. In fact, in his online piece, Frank Newport never once mentioned that salient fact. It was completely ignored. (Gallup did detail Obama's favorable ratings, which is slightly different than job approval.)

Can anyone else recall the last time a major polling firm released the results of presidential job approval ratings and then forgot to even mention that the president's ratings went up? It's quite odd.

Instead, Newport, mimicking the preference of the Beltway press corps, stressed how many Americans had a lower opinion of Obama's handling of specific issues. The Village thinks this is a very big deal: Sure Obama's popular, but most Americans don't agree with all his policies, which means it's all a house of cards.

At least that's how I read a lot of the coverage. And when you have that kind of mindset, you get write-ups like the one from Gallup that forgot to mention the president's job approval rating went up since May. (i.e. Boring!)

Talk about burying the lede.