Jumping To Conclusions

Yeah, it's been a while. Ran out of things to say. And lazy. Maybe I'll start back into this slowly..

So according to the Wall Street Journal:

Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an "excellent or pretty good" job as president, down from 35% in April and significantly lower than 43% in January. It compares with 71% of Americans who said Mr. Bush is doing an "only fair or poor" job, up from 63% in April.

The article then goes on to characterize "excellent or pretty good" as "positive", and "fair or poor" as "negative". Well, I'll grant them "poor", but since when is "fair" a negative assessment? If I say I think the President is doing a "fair" job (which I do), I don't mean that negatively. I mean that in a neutral-to-positive "not bad, but could be better" way.

So why not just break down the results as "excellent", "pretty good", "fair", and "poor"? Wouldn't that be fairer reporting?