Who exactly is reporting on how well the surge is working in Baghdad?

Nearly 90 percent of U.S. journalists in Iraq say much of Baghdad is still too dangerous to visit, despite a recent drop in violence attributed to the build-up of U.S. forces, a poll released on Wednesday said.

The survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center showed that many U.S. journalists believe coverage has painted too rosy a picture of the conflict.

A separate Pew poll released on Tuesday showed that 48 percent of Americans believe the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going very or fairly well, up from 34 percent in June, amid signs of declining Iraqi civilian casualties and progress against Islamist militants such as al Qaeda in Iraq.

But most journalists said they believe violence and the threat of violence have increased during their tenures.

"Above all, the journalists -- most of them veteran war correspondents -- describe conditions in Iraq as the most perilous they have ever encountered, and this above everything else is influencing the reporting," the authors said in a report that accompanied the data.

Now if the journalists cannot do any real reporting because it is too dangerous then where does the "good news" come from? Who is providing the numbers that say the casualties are down?

Is it from the Iraqi Prime Minister? And we all know that his take on this subject is not prejudiced, don't we.

Or from the Associated Press? I usually trust them on most news stories, but where are they getting their numbers? Is it from reports like these?

Let's face it. If the reporters are relying on information provided by the military to gauge the amount of violence in Baghdad that should raise thousands of red flags in our heads.

But that does not seem to stop CNN, MSNBC, and of course FOX, from acting as if it is the gospel.

Hey maybe it is like the Gospels. That was also a supposedly historical document with a very pronounced prejudicial bent to it.