Why do they paint such a negative picture of America?

Clifford May has an excellent op ed in the National Post today entitled "The 'Islamophbia' epidemic that wasn't:" My bolds

Here's how I interpret these poll numbers: Most Americans are struggling to understand what separates -- and what links -- Islam, Islamism and jihadism. Most do not blame average Muslims for the fact that there are Islamic regimes, movements and groups vowing to murder their children. In other words: Most Americans are astonishingly tolerant.

Needless to say, this is not the story being told by the mainstream media. The narrative they are pushing was expressed skillfully in a front-page, above-the-fold story in The Washington Post, which informed us that Barack Obama "has found himself confronting rising anti-Islamic sentiment at odds with his message of religious tolerance."

To make sure readers absorbed the spin, the story asserted a second time that public opinion "is moving against Islam," and then referred, again, to an "increasingly anti-Islamic public" -- all on the basis of a poll that, as I believe I've established, demonstrates no such thing.

Yup. It's disgusting.

Read the whole thing. It's very interesting. Why I discount everything I read in the mainstream media.

Sadly, however, some people still take them at their word and have a therefore very skewed picture of the people of the United States or of conservatives, especially Christian conservatives.