Covert Liberal Activists

A search at Google News on "households food stamps record" done at 9 p.m. ET (not in quotes, sorted by date, with duplicates and similar items) returned three items. Two are at the Daily Caller (here and here); and the other is at Reason.com. Program statistics for March, the latest month available, show that a record 23.12 million households -- one in every five in the U.S. -- received food stamp benefits. At 47.73 million, the total number of persons receiving benefits was only 65,000 below the record set in December. In 2008, average participation was less than 29 million.

That search result shows, despite the fact that records are supposed to be news, that the establishment press is completely uninterested in communicating the fact that the food stamp program continues to grow, though very slowly, even as the economy supposedly recovers. There is one number that the press has been citing frequently, namely the number of people who might be removed from the food stamp rolls if language attempting to limit the program to people who are truly in need remains in the otherwise bloated disaster known as the farm bill. 

Karen Finney recently began her new gig as an MSNBC weekend anchor, but on Sunday’s Weekends with Alex Witt, she got a little nostalgic for one of her old jobs.

Appearing as the subject of Witt’s "Office Politics" segment, Finney continued the liberal media tradition of making the GOP the focus of the current Obama administration scandals.  “[Republicans] clearly think that they can ride this to the midterm elections on this sort of culture of coverup,” she huffed. [Video below the break. MP3 audio here.]

Sometime late Thursday afternoon, an editorial at the New York Times bitterly criticizing President Obama for the expansion of surveillance efforts during his administration contained this sentence: "The administration has lost all credibility." Within a few hours, as seen here, that sentence was changed to "The administration has lost all credibility on this issue," and set off in a separate paragraph.

The Times is pretending that it didn't do what it obviously did:

Yesterday, the editorial board at the New York Times published an editorial harshly criticizing President Obama and his administration for continuing to collect the phone records of millions of Verizon customers. Presumably, the board obtained word-for-word consensus before hitting the "Enter" key on this crucial sentence in the editorial's second paragraph: "The Obama administration has lost all credibility."

Mere hours after its initial publication, Jamie Weinstein at the Daily Caller notes, the editorial ("President Obama's Dragnet") was revised. Yours truly has the graphic grabs of the most crucial changes after the jump.

On May 27, Nicholas Confessore and Michael Luo at the New York Times filed a ridiculously incoherent, ignorant and biased report on Tea Party groups' attempts to have their organizations approved for tax-exempt status. The story's window title: "Non-Profit Applcants Chafing at IRS Tested Political Limits." The actual print edition title (Page A1, of course): "Groups Targeted by I.R.S. Tested Rules on Politics." The headlines give the impression that Tea Party groups deliberately tried to test the boundaries of legality.

The pair's content also betrayed more than a little ignorance of the rules governing campaign finance, electioneering, and literature distribution. Among those interviewed for the story was Tom Zawistowski, Portage County TEA Party Executive Director. Zawistowski took great exception to their writeup in an email he distributed on Saturday (bolds are mine; additional paragraph breaks added by me):

When Covered California, the Golden States' health insurance exchange being set up under ObamaCare, initially announced its rates beginning in 2014, it claimed that rates will go down. Kevin Drum at Mother Jones ("if these early results hold up, Obamacare's structure seems to be doing a pretty good job at its core mission of controlling prices.") and Rick Ungar at Forbes ("the reality is that the early report card on Obamacare—at least in those states willing to give the law a chance to succeed—is looking pretty darn good") got suckered in.

It isn't so, as Avik Roy explained yesterday at Forbes (bolds are mine):

This looks like a perfect exhibit of intimidation combined with insufferable arrogance.

Joel Gehrke at the Washington Examiner reports that Democratic Party spokesperson Brad Woodhouse, apparently temporarily assuming the role of White House Press Secretary, is really upset that the New York Times refused to meet yesterday for an off-the-record discussion about Attorney General Eric Holder about recent revelations and admissions that the Justice Departmet has been conducting secret sureillance of reporters for several years (bold is mine):

David Koenig's Wednesday coverage at the Associated Press of Exxon Mobil's annual meeting contained a predictable headline and related content telling us that the company wouldn't "explicitly ban discrimination against gays because the company already banned discrimination of any type and didn't need to add language regarding gays." Koenig's report apparently couldn't be considered complete without a contribution of misleading climate statistics and statements from the wire service's Seth Borenstein.

Borenstein's apparent input consisted of the following four paragraphs (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

Earlier this afternoon, Matt Sheffield at NewsBusters noted that "The owner of Newsweek, the troubled liberal weekly news magazine, has confirmed reports that it is trying to unload the money-losing operation even despite the fact that it jettisoned its print edition last year."

A Tuesday morning puff piece on poor, besieged, downtrodden, regretful Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder posted by Daniel Klaidman at the Daily Beast, Newsweek's online umbrella, perfectly illustrates why the operation continues to shed readers and contributed mightily to a reported $8.8 million loss last quarter. Get out the waist-high-boots for this one:

In "Go Ahead, Invade Their Phone Records: AP Reports Obama Has 'Alleged Scandals' and 'Alleged Misbehavior,'" Tim Graham at NewsBusters noted how Tom Raum at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, claimed that "Alleged misbehavior by the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies gives the GOP something else to talk about and investigate as the economy clearly, if slowly, recovers on President Barack Obama's watch, robbing Republicans of a central argument against Democrats."

That this is an exercise in sheer fantasy on Raum's part can be quickly demonstrated in two graphics.

UPDATE: The photo has been changed to a University of Hawaii logo.

For outrageous and tasteless photo placement, it's hard to top the one accompanying an article in the Modesto Press about top college football prospect Aaron Zwahlen.

Despite the availability of many photos of the player, at least a few of which are likely public domain, the Press chose to use the following photo accompanying a report that Zwahlen is choosing to do two years of missionary work with his church before he begins his collegiate career at the University of Hawaii (HT to a NewsBusters tipster):

Old dog, same old tricks.

At Bloomberg Views, Al Hunt, formerly "the executive editor of Bloomberg News, directing coverage of the Washington bureau," referred to the controversies swirling around the White House as "faux scandals" and insisted that ... wait for it ... the Obama administration "is the most scandal-free administration in recent memory." No wonder Bloomberg News developed into such a hopelessly biased outfit while he was there. As much as I could stand to excerpt from Hunt's harangue follows the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

It has only been a week since the Associated Press learned that its reporters' privacy and the confidentiality of their relationships with sources were violated on a massive and unprecedented scale by Eric Holder's Justice Department in April and May of last year. DOJ has admitted that it secretly obtained the call records for 20 personal and business lines used by over 100 AP reporters and editors. Despite its insistence that they were looking for the person who leaked information about a foiled terrorist plot, there is reason to believe the DOJ's fishing expedition was a childish response to the wire service's refusal to let the government crow about the foiled operation before anyone reported on it.

In the wake of all of this, the AP, appears determined to soldier on as the wire service more appropriately described as the Administration's Press. That's about the only way one can view the Saturday afternoon dispatch from the AP's David Espo and its accompanying headline:

It's just so unfortunate that such nice guys are going through such trying circumstances.

That's the impression one gets from graphic teases seen at about 9:30 this morning at the Washington Post, where the captions underneath the three left thumbnails read as follows: "President Obama’s disastrous political week"; "Jay Carney’s tough day"; and "Jay Carney’s day — in 7 faces." If you don't recall such an obvious outward show of sympathy during the final year of George W. Bush's presidency, you're not alone. A quick look at the underlying items follows the jump.

Time was, several decades ago, that local and regional news in many parts of the country served as a bit of an antidote against the relentlessly biased national establishment press.

That certainly isn't the case in Aurora, Colorado, site of last year's horrible theater murders at the alleged hands of James Holmes. Dave Perry, the editor of the Aurora Sentinel, wrote a column on April 25 proving that he is not fit to hold his current position, especially when it comes to overseeing reporting on Second Amendment matters. Among other things, he characterized the National Rifle Association as "the real terrorist threat here in America" whose members are "guilty monsters" who should be "sent to Guantanamo Bay for all eternity" (bolds are mine; HT Instapundit):

Today, The Newspaper Guild & Communications Workers of America issued a statement which began as follows: "Recently you’ve seen many petitions asking that Warren Buffett and his executives not be allowed to buy the Tribune Company’s newspapers. We understand why Buffett's group breeds this distrust. They are active political proponents of harsh left-wing positions. We’re also not certain that Tribune will listen to anything but money when the final decision is made."

Of course, I'm kidding. The statement at the Guild/CWA, which we should never forget outspokenly supported, endorsed and for a time actively participated in the crime-infested, disgusting, violent Occupy movement during 2011 and early 2012, was about the eeeevil Koch brothers' apparent interest in purchasing the Tribune's group of publications (HT Jim Romenesko via Hot Air headlines):

You've got hand it to some (probably most) of the reporters at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press. Their story is that the economy is all right, and by gosh, they're sticking to it.

Tom Raum's dispatch yesterday is a case in point. Along the way, he pulled out several of the tired spin-driven claims which have long since been taken down but which haven't yet penetrated the skulls of low-information voters. Raum and AP seem puzzled that the supposedly okey-dokey economy doesn't seem to be helping President Obama or Democrats' 2014 congressional and senatorial election prospects (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

At MarketWatch this morning, Paul Farrell's hostility towards Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Milton Friedman and especially free-market capitalism boiled over. Farrell claims that capitalism "is destined to destroy the world, absent a historic paradigm shift."

The problem he describes really has nothing to do with properly practiced free-market capitalism, but is instead a combination of rampant cronyism and the abandonment of capitalism's (and society's) Judeo-Christian moral underpinnings. But that's a long discussion outside the scope of this post. This post is about the opening claim Farrell makes: "Billionaires control the vast majority of the world’s wealth." No they don't.

To be clear, this criticism is not of President Obama. It is directed at the Associated Press's Jim Kuhnhenn, who seems to think that the impact of any and all events in the nation and the world on the status of Obama's "presidency" is more important than any other consideration.

I don't see any other way one can interpret the opening paragraph of Kuhnhenn's early Saturday dispatch (also here):

Any time you see an establishment press reporter fail to use quotation marks in characterizing something said by a subject of his or her report, be on the lookout for misdirection, misinterpretation, and downright distortion, especially if the person is a conservative or Republican. A story at Politico by Donovan Slack early this afternoon about the reactions of House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to President Obama's budget is a case in point. Slack pretended that Boehner said something he simply did not say.

Slack wrote: "House Speaker John Boehner hit President Obama's budget for failing to cut enough spending while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell dismissed it as 'just another left-wing wish list.'" Slack didn't quote Boehner. Boehner didn't come anywhere close to saying what Slack claims he said, as seen in the complete text of the Speaker's statement (video is at the link) following the jump:

Is it MSNBC or MSDNC?  Andrew Kirell of Mediaite reported today that the left-wing commentary network has hired the Democratic National Committee’s director of video production, Anne Thompson, to produce the network’s newest weekend show Up with Steve Kornacki.  Yet, this is just another episode in the annals of MSNBC’s revolving door of hiring Obamaites.  MSNBC has already hired David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, two high-level Obama campaign advisors. On top of that, other Obama acolytes Like Ben LaBolt are recurring guests on shows like Now with Alex Wagner.

If MSNBC’s president, Phil Griffin, was really trying to distance himself from the Democratic Party, this was a poor decision.  Griffin has been trying to dispel the fledgling narrative that his network is nothing more than a communications outlet for the DNC.

Your daily dose of inadvertent humor comes from an article by Annie Lowrey at the New York Times on Sunday evening ("Lew to Press for European Policy Changes"; also in today's print edition).

In "covering" (from Washington?) Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's four-day European trip for meetings with EU leaders encouraging them to pursue "growth" policies -- which in Keynesians' fevered minds always really means "stimulus" and not genuine growth-driven initiatives -- Lowrey wrote the following (bold is mine):

Well, we can stop worrying about the economy now. Write it down. Chris Rugaber at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, tells readers today that the business cycle has been repealed. That's right. As of now, "Gone are the fears that the economy could fall into another recession."

Even giving him the benefit of the doubt that he only meant to refer to the short- or intermediate-term, it takes a mountain of chutzpah to make such a declaration after a quarter during the which the economy grew at an annualized 0.4%, i.e., an actual 0.1%. It's doubly hard to take because the press, led by the Associated Press, feared that a recession was around the corner virtually every month or quarter from the time I began blogging in early 2005 until mid-2008, when the National Bureau of Economic Research defied the normal person's definition of recession (i.e., two consecutive quarters of contraction) and decided that a recession began in December 2007, seven months before it really did.

I guess we had better start paying closer attention to how the establishment press labels -- and mislabels -- congressional districts.

The headline at the Associated Press at a lengthy column composed by Charles Babington bemoaning the lack of willingness of Ohio First District Congressman Steve Chabot to "compromise," i.e., sell out his principles, reads as follows: "PARTISAN DISCORD FINDS ROOTS IN TOSS-UP DISTRICTS." Uh, Chabot won the district in the 2012 elections by 20 points. Babington's attempt to justify the "toss-up" classification also falls flat:

Politico's "About" page consists of two rotating graphics: One says: "More reporters. Better coverage." The other: "A distinctive brand of journalism driving the conversation."

It's hard to make a case that Politico's coverage is "better" (than what -- the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press? That would be setting the bar pretty low). And while it is distinctive, the web site should replace the "c" in "distinctive" with a "k." In one example of stinky distinctiveness, Katie Glueck spent four paragraphs smearing the NRA by inference in a story about evidence found at the home of Newtown, Connecticut mass murderer Adam Lanza and his mother Nancy before recognizing the NRA's response that neither person was ever a member of the organization (bolds are mine throughout this post:

At the Politico, Darren Samuelsohn reports that "The public has largely tuned out the Democrats’ repeated warnings about ... (what will happen) if the sequester cuts stay in place." He also notes in a separate report that Republicans "Republicans are winning the sequester wars," and that "even the White House admits there’s little chance of reversing all the cuts."

Of course, what's in question here mostly aren't "cuts" at all, but reductions in projected spending increases, as pollster Scott Rasmussen explained in his note accompanying a recent poll his organization did on the topic:

A quick review of recent dispateches from the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, finds four items which unskeptically take claims of "global warming" at face value -- and that's just from Thursday and Friday.

Too bad for AP, and the public at large being brainwashed by the incessant repetition of what is proving to be patently false, that we're nearing the two-decade mark of flat worldwide temperatures, and that even reliably leftist outfits are starting to backtrack.

Apparently the journalistic disease known as obsessive-compulsive interactive map publishing is spreading.

Late last year, Gannett's Journal News in White Plains, New York created a firestorm when it published an interactive map of gun permit holders in two counties north of New York City, obviously giving criminals, depending on how they target victims, the identity of places to rob to get guns or, by inference, people they could be comfortable wouldn't be carrying concealed weapons. On Wednesday evening, the Des Moines Register published an item still present on its site discussing the general degree of presence or absence of resource officers at Iowa schools. It also published a "handy" interactive map, since taken down, of which schools have resource officers, which ones don't, and which ones didn't respond to a survey on the topic. Excerpts from the report follow the jump (HT Newsmax via The Blaze):

Note to Piers Morgan: Journalism isn't rocket science and making a few phone calls can go a long way.

Giddy about a Newtown search warrant that showed there was an NRA certificate found in the Lanza household,  Morgan tweeted giddily: 

I want to hear Wayne LaPierre explain what checks they made on Adam Lanza before sending him a @nra certificate. #Newtown

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 28, 2013

Yet, this is an abject lie.