Let's start with the pollsters themselves. The New York Times and CBS News started the latest round of dinner-time survey calls. The New York Times headline read, "Obama sees a rebound in his approval ratings," while CBS News reported that, "Views of Obamacare improve, but negative overall."

Now both headlines are fair, but CBS tells more of the story.

According to their numbers, the president's approval rating has improved, but that's from an all-time low, and to where it was right before the rollout stumbled all over the evening news. In short, the public's faith in the president might be picking back up, but it remains fundamentally shaken. And, again, those polled think a bit better of the health care law than they did last month, but we're two months removed from that disaster of a website launch. Did it have anywhere to go but up? And, finally, both the president and his health care law's approval numbers are hovering at or below 50 percent.

The Los Angeles Times reported on the USA Today/Pew Center Research poll, stating: "Obama's approval ratings stabilize in latest poll." Well, again, that might be true, but consider: the rollout of PPACA – and its bump in public awareness – has clearly been a drag on the president's public image. In fact, encouraging economic news – and an increasingly optimistic public are what's helping counter the effects of PPACA's public perception. The Washington Post's approach, I kind of liked: "The worst may be behind Obama. But it cost him dearly." Maybe it's the storyteller in me.

Also, The Washington Post is the only paper I could find from a Google-filled morning that managed to report on a couple of the smaller polls, as well. The Post, in reporting on both the latest Quinnipiac University and Marist College/McClatchy numbers, simply said "two polls show Obama hitting a new low." For the record, Quinnipiac had Obama's approval at 38 percent while Marist had him pegged at 43 percent. (And, in all fairness, the Post even updated their story later with the Pew numbers showing the president's improvement.)

The Wall Street Journal hit the phones with NBC News and reported straight out that the "Health law hurts president politically." But their polling partner came out a little harder with the headline, "Obama ends year with abysmal approval rating." Course, this is the same "liberal" network whose chief political reporter (Chuck Todd) compared the HealthCare.gov launch to Hurricane Katrina. Sure, both were bad, but last time I checked, no one died or is still homeless because a single website wouldn't load.

By the way, my own hometown paper, The Kansas City Star, which reported: "Low approval of Congress, Obama," showed up as one of the few news outlets that included Congress in the unpopularity contest. (And, no, I'm not counting The Huffington Post, either, who's a little obsessed with presidential selfies and handshakes for my taste.)

As journalists, we're naturally handicapped because most of us are so stereotypically bad at math. We jump on poll numbers, survey results and scientific studies like they're happy hour appetizers. They're bite-sized, already put together and fill you up just enough to get you through the day. Just don't mistake them for an actual meal.

Jokes aside, I guess the moral of the story (so to speak) is that it's not so much believing everything you read as it is just not believing the first thing you read. Unless, of course, you read it here…