Networks Ignore Gallup Poll Showing Obama Approval Rating at an All-Time Low [Updated]
By Curtis Houck | September 5, 2014 12:37 AM EDT
UPDATE [11:15 a.m.]: On Friday morning, ABC, CBS, and NBC continued their blackout on the latest Gallup poll numbers showing President Obama's approval rating at an all-time low of 38 percent. The blackout also continued regarding any polls on the President and his job approval/disapproval ratings. The "big three" networks disinterest in the President's poll numbers continued despite multiple polls showing his approval rating below 40 percent and the gap between those who approve and disapprove of the job he's doing at over a dozen points.
Instead of covering these poll numbers as they did throughout the administration of President George W. Bush, the networks devoted plenty of time to stories that they deemed important. Both ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today covered a dog in Poland who was dressed up as a giant spider to scare unspecting passerbys as part of a prank. On CBS This Morning, the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine joined the program and gushingly promoted the magazine's annoucement that they will endorse political candidates who support gay marriage, contraception, and abortion.
The evening newscasts for the major broadcast networks came and went on Thursday night and ABC, CBS, and NBC refused to cover a new poll from Gallup that showed President Barack Obama's approval rating at an all-time low of 38 percent.
After the CBS Evening News made mention of a CBS News poll on Tuesday showing only 36 percent of Americans approving of how Obama was doing his job when it came to foreign policy, it reverted back to joining ABC and NBC in ignoring any and all polls concerning President Obama and his job performance.
The poll, which was taken over a two-day period from Monday to Wednesday, ties Obama's previous all-time low in Gallup's Daily Tracking Poll from October 2011. This most recent poll also reported that 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the way the President is doing his job and thus places the disparity between Obama's approval and disapproval ratings at 16 percent.
According to Real Clear Politics, this is the fourth poll in the last month to place Obama's approval rating below 40 percent (with the other three coming from Reuters/Ipsos polls).
Obama's sagging poll numbers come as he's in Europe this week at a NATO conference with multiple crises on the foreign policy front, ranging from Russia's aggressive measures in Ukraine to the continued rise of the Islamic terrorist group ISIS in Iraq and Syria as they beheaded a second American journalist in a video released Tuesday.
Back home, the midterm elections are nine weeks away from Tuesday, where the control of the House and Senate are up for grabs on November 4 as Republicans are expected to stay in control of the House while numerous Democratic Senators for reelection running in Republican-friendly states could result in Republicans gaining control of the Senate as well, leaving the President without a friendly chamber in Congress.
While the networks could have chosen to even provide a news brief on this polling data, they found other stories to cover instead. As I noted earlier this evening, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir covered Google paying out millions of dollars to parents whose children downloaded apps without parental consent while both the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley and NBC Nightly News highlighted the discovery of a new, massive dinosaur that weighed 65-tons when it walked the earth.
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Curtis Houck
Curtis Houck is the Managing Editor of NewsBusters for the Media Research Center