In light of the unfolding union drama in Wisconsin, wouldn't it be considered big news if a national news organization had fresh polling data that showed a strong majority of Americans supported the right of unions to use collective bargaining. After all, the entire Wisconsin showdown revolves around the rather radical notion of stripping many state workers of their right to use collective bargaining.

As the drama unfolds, a key question has been whether that anti-union push is a popular one politically, and whether most Americans feel the same way Wisconsin's Republican governor does.

We now know the answers to those questions: No and no. It's just that Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal doesn't think those revelations are very important.

Murdoch's pro-business Journal teamed up with NBC for a recent round of polling and discovered 62 percent of Americans “oppose efforts to strip unionized government workers of their rights to collectively bargain.” But that key finding about bipartisan support for the union right to use collective bargaining, and that very bad piece of news for Wisconsin's Republican governor, was completely buried in the Journal's polling report. In fact, the first and only mention of the union polling results came in the 23rd paragraph of a 24-paragraph article.

No joke. The fact that new polling data shows American strongly support collective bargaining is today considered an afterthought inside the Journal newsroom.

And what information was included in the final paragraph? This nugget [emphasis added]:

The results suggest that public opinion may be tipping against Wisconsin Republican governor Scott Walker in his prolonged faceoff with the unions.

By contrast, here's the NBC News headline for an article about the same polling results:

NBC/WSJ poll: 62% against stripping public employees' bargaining rights