There's no need to distract the press regarding the latest findings from the AP-GfK poll. Y'know, the one that has Obama's approval rating at a robust 53 percent.

Don't distract the Beltway press corps, let alone the right-wing blogosphere, because they're still obsessing over yesterday's Quinnipiac poll that had Obama down to a 42 percent approval rating. Those results, as we noted, were instantly dubbed to be very important.

It's true the Quinnipiac poll didn't really resemble many other reputable survey results issued this month. And it's true virtually every other poll measuring Obama's approval rating in March found him hovering around the 50 percent mark. But that didn't matter. The Quinnipiac findings were news and the AP's are not. Why? Because good news for Obama isn't really news.

So shh, please don't wake the press and disturb them with news of the latest AP finding. Please don't interrupt their fascination with the 42 percent approval finding when a new poll has Obama more than ten points higher than that.

And how badly does the press not want to focus on Obama's solid approval ratings? So badly that even the AP buried the lede in reporting on its own poll:

Americans are growing increasingly pessimistic about the economy as soaring gas costs strain already-tight budgets. But people aren't taking it out on President Barack Obama, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows.

In the survey, 15 percent of Americans said they thought the economy had improved in the past month, down from 30 percent who thought that in January. Only a third were optimistic about the country, down from about half earlier this year. And 28 percent thought the economy will get worse; that's the most who have expressed that sentiment since the question was first asked in December 2009.

In the AP-GfK poll over the past month, Obama's approval rating has held steady around 50 percent.

The AP can't even be bothered to spell out Obama's approval rating in the latest AP poll. (It's 53 percent. But the AP goes with “around 50 percent.”) And no, that's not even the lede. Instead, Americans souring on the economy is the lede.

But I guarantee you if the AP poll had the president's approval rating dropping to 42 percent, the way the Quinnipiac poll did, the AP would have hyped that in the headline and the AP poll would be making headlines today.