The Politico’s Josh Gerstein is a solid reporter. I give him credit for being the first journalist to combat the conventional wisdom surrounding CIA Director Leon Panetta’s response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claim that the agency had misled her.

But Gerstein’s story today, currently featured on Politico’s homepage, just starts off on the wrong foot:

“In a nearly 6,000-word address Thursday extending an olive branch to the Muslim world, President Barack Obama managed never to utter the one word that comes to mind most often when many Americans think about Islam: terrorism.”

Is “terrorism” really the word that comes to mind when Americans hear “Islam”? If that’s true, we can point the blame at a media which never drew the distinction between adherents of Islam and religious extremists. Gerstein’s article doesn’t do much to fix this perception.