Are media fooled by Iraq statistics?

Have the American media been fooled into believing the situation in Iraq has improved since "the surge"? That's the question lurking behind an article in the New York Times by Damien Cave. He argues that claims by the US government about the numbers of Iraqis returning to Baghdad may have been "massaged by politics". (Great phrase, eh?) But have they also been accepted too readily by US journalists? (Via E&P)