Kansas City Star

Well, the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, apparently has Missouri Democratic Congressman and Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver's back. As of 2:40 p.m., there is no national story relevant to Cleaver's unpaid $1 million-plus loan at the wire service's national site, even though information published by the Kansas City Star late Friday evening (interesting timing; HT to KC Star's David Helling, who later informed me that the story made Page A-1 of the Star's Saturday print edition, while the original received the same placement on Friday) indicates that taxpayers could be out up to $1.1 million because the Small Business Administration-backed a loan to Cleaver's car wash business back in 2002 which is has been seriously delinquent for years. The Bank has sued for repayment.

There is an unbylined local AP story which appears to have been published shortly after midnight on Monday (shown in full because of its brevity and for fair use and discussion purposes):

As of 11:55 a.m., a search at the Associated Press's national site on "Cleaver" returns nothing related to an April 6 story reported at the Kansas City star (HT Nice Deb via Gateway Pundit) that Bank of America has sued Missouri Congressman and Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver for repayment of a $1 million-plus loan relating to a car wash.

The KC Star didn't exactly provide exemplary coverage in its report. One would think from reading the story's headline and first two paragraphs that Bank of America and the congressman are having some kind of difficult conversation. In paragraph 3, we finally learn that there really is a lawsuit involved. It took the Star seven paragraphs to indicate that taxpayers may be on the hook and eight paragraphs to tag Cleaver as a Dem (impact-minimizing words in bold):

In Tuesday's Kansas City Star, reporter Aaron Barnhart revealed that Current TV, the cable channel launched in 2005 by Al Gore, would be the least missed, only managing to be viewed by 18,000 households in the fourth quarter of 2010. Also on the list of "Cable's Least Wanted" were the DIY network, ESPN Classic, Fox Soccer Channel, Logo, and Sleuth.

Despite such abysmal ratings for Current, Barnhart argued that the addition of former MSNBC Countdown host Keith Olbermann to the channel would turn things around: "The good news for Current is that it won’t be counting its audience in the high five figures, at least not when Olbermann is on the air." He later remarked: "Unlike Current, the rest of Cable’s Least Wanted don’t have a ratings savior waiting in the wings."

Memo to media members wishing to invite the Tea Party Founder on your show, or use him as a source for your biased reports:  He isn't exactly who you think he is.

Since the NAACP voted to condemn extremist elements in the Tea Party, news networks, sites, and liberal blogs have rushed to include ‘Tea Party Founder', Dale Robertson, in their reports.  Problem being, Dale Robertson as Tea Party anything has frequently and thoroughly been, um ... ‘refudiated'.   

Despite this, the media has a history of holding Robertson up as a shining example of Tea Party racism.  Why?  Robertson once demonstrated a level of ignorance that boggles the mind by holding a sign reading "Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = (N-Word)", at a Houston Tea Party Society (TPS) event.

The reality however, is that Robertson has predominantly self-described, if any, links to the Tea Party movement, while legitimate factions of the movement have had to repeatedly distance themselves from the man.  Robertson was expelled from the event at which he was holding the aforementioned sign on the very same day.  He was formally denounced in a statement released by the Houston TPS.  He was called ‘no friend' of the Tea Party at Pajamas Media, and mocked at RedState.  He was shown to be for his infamous sign, before he was against it.

So logically, the media has decided to help further the cause of the NAACP by bringing Robertson back out of the shadows.  Since word of the the NAACP resolution got out, Robertson's name has appeared at...

Listen closely and you can hear the sound of crickets chirping over at the Kansas City Star after their Readers Representative, Derek Donovan, recommended a re-examination by that newspaper of their initial story of a supposed "hate crime" committed at the Capitol steps Tea Party in Washington D.C. on March 20:

I've talked to many, many readers this week about continuing fallout from claims that members of "tea party" protests shouted racial slurs at members of the Congressional Black Caucus and one spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver on March 20.

The Web and the talk shows are awash with reports that the word "nigger" wasn't recorded by people with video cameras. Some have also disputed that Cleaver was spat on, though a video shows pretty clearly to me that he reacted that way contemporaneously. Was it simply spittle from the man yelling in his face, rather than a single intentional spit? You can't tell from the video -- but if someone was yelling at me so forcefully that he also spit on me, I'm not sure I'd make much differentiation there.

As I wrote earlier in the week, the initial report in The Star March 21 should have attributed the claims to the people who made them, instead of simply reporting them as fact.

Yes, a story by William Douglas which was speed written in record time. Of course, the Kansas City Star is now taking its sweet time about actually verifying the "facts" behind the story. One place they might want to start is by Googling "Emanuel Cleaver" and discovering his latest reaction to the spitting incident:

The latest newspaper circulation numbers, measuring copies sold from April through September of this year, show a 10.6 percent decline in daily newspaper sales, the first double-digit drop in circulation ever. Newspaper readership is now at its lowest level since before World War II.

The biggest losers during this six-month period, as reported by NewsBusters's Tom Blumer, were the San Francisco Chronicle (down 25.8 percent daily), the Newark Star-Ledger (down 22.2 percent daily), and the Boston Globe (down 18.5 percent daily).

The New York Times's sales during the period fell to 927,861, the first time the paper sold less than 1 million copies in that time span in decades. The Wall Street Journal saw a 0.6 percent increase in circulation, making it the most purchased newspaper in the country. The Journal surpassed USA Today, whose circulation declined by over 17 percent.

IMPORTANT UPDATE BELOW!  (Kansas City Star and Abouhalkah recognize their own ignorance, change title of post and disable old link).

Numerous reasons to oppose the ludicrous Obama health care plan aside, Yael T. Abouhalkah of the Kansas City Star has cut through to the real reason for dissent - Americans are ignorant.

While Abouhalkah will undoubtedly argue that the message was meant to apply merely to the aspect of health care knowledge, he is quite unsuccessful at holding back his overall disdain for the way American's have responded to the plan. 

The title of his most recent blog post says it all.  In referring to an NBC poll about the health care plan, one in which MSNBC titles Doubts About Obama's Plans, Abouhalkah titles his post - Poll: Ignorance abounds among Americans on health care plan. 

The message?  If you're not down with the President's plan, then you can only be classified as ignorant.

But what examples of ignorance does the author specifically cite?

(Continued Below) 

Kansas City Star editorial page columnist Barb Shelly is miffed.  In today's "The (mis)labeling of Kathleen Sebelius," she explains why:

In other words, this image that's being projected of Sebelius as some radical defender of the abortion industry is very much overstated. She's a pragmatic executive and it's ludicrous that her confirmation process has become so politicized.

Sebelius is, of course, Barack Obama's health secretary nominee.  In that capacity, she'll wield considerable influence over governmental policies concerning abortion.  Shelly argues:

I'll say this again: Sebelius is a moderate governor in a state that happens to be home to one of the few doctors willing to perform late-term abortions. Just like many other Kansans, that doctor, George Tiller, has exercised his constitutional right to contribute to political campaigns. Some of his money went to Sebelius.

Shelly doesn't detail how much of Tiller's money went to Sebelius.  Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported that the nominee "got nearly three times as much political money" from the abortionist than she had reported to the Senate Finance Committee.

Yael T. Abouhalkah is all excited to let the readers of the Kansas City Star know that he's found another Republican politician that has had to grovel at the feet of Rush Limbaugh, apologizing to the radio giant for a slight cast his way. And to "prove" it Abouhalkah used a press release from the Democratic National Campaign Committee that said so. Yeah, nice unbiased source there, Abouhalkah.

Seriously, does Abouhalkah imagine that a Democrat Party press release is an unbiased source about what is happening between a Republican lawmaker and Rush Limbaugh? No wonder newspapers are falling on such tough times. If Abouhalkah is any indication, the definition of common words aren't even any longer understood in the Star's newsroom. Words like "source," "unbiased," "legitimate," and "veracity" seem to be foreign to the folks at the Star. With such a failure to understand the very basics of journalism, its no wonder readers are abandoning newspapers in droves.

How would you like to wake up New Year's day to read an opinion piece in your paper's entertainment section equating the United States of America to Nazi Germany and depicting Iraqi insurgents as being akin to a little known group of Polish Jews who rescued over a thousand people from Hitler's concentration camps?

That's a great way to start the New Year, dontcha think?

Well, the good folks at the Kansas City Star seemed to miss the inappropriateness in such sentiments during the holidays when they published "Is WWII In Movies Really Iraq?" (h/t NB reader David Godinez):

Yet another writer from a lefty paper is here to tell us all that McCain and all his followers are racists. You see, if McCain wins, Steve Kraske imagines in his latest column that all blacks will feel that Jim Crow is back and the rest of the Democratic Party will be "angry at the world." So, a McCain win will be the return of Jim Crow? Isn't that an awfully irresponsible lie to promulgate, Mr. Kraske?

Kraske ruminates about how horrible it will be if McCain beats The One at the polls on Tuesday. But, he gets quite a lot of his analysis wrong, not surprisingly.

Perhaps it takes a foreigner looking from the outside in to give us a clear look at the overall meaning of the mainstream media silence on the alleged John Edwards scandal. In this case it is Guy Adams writing in his US Media Diary in the UK Independent about "The 'scoop' the US papers ignored." (emphasis mine):

That old cliché about everything being bigger in America seems especially pertinent when attempting to describe the sheer scale of the crisis currently afflicting the US newspaper industry, which makes all Fleet Street's woes look like a summer picnic.

Last week, The Los Angeles Times decided to flog its historic downtown offices, on top of sacking 150 of its 870 journalists. So did The Chicago Tribune. Almost every title in the land is now shedding staff; a hundred New York Times hacks have been offered voluntary redundancy; Newsweek recently announced cuts. It's a bloodbath out there, as US media companies attempt to claw a pound of flesh from haemorrhaging readerships.

A television writer for the Kansas City Star, Aaron Barnhart, who stayed at the Beverly Hilton at the same time the National Enquirer reporters and John Edwards were engaged in a Yakety Sax Benny Hill chase in that hotel, is claiming that the Edwards scandal story has finally "trickled out" into the mainstream media. Barnhart makes some interesting observations but comes to  erroneous conclusions:

Who knew that the biggest story to break at the television critics' tour would happen while we were all in our rooms getting some shut-eye?

In the wee hours of Tuesday, July 22, John Edwards — the former senator from North Carolina, former presidential candidate and running mate in 2004 — was confronted by reporters for the National Enquirer at a men's room of the Beverly Hilton, the very hotel where TCA summer press tour had concluded a few hours earlier. They believed he was there to pay a visit to the child he had fathered out of wedlock and the baby's mother, an ex-campaign staffer named Rielle Hunter.

Once again MSNBC president Phil Griffin is claiming that his cable outlet is not liberal on purpose. (I know what you're saying, if you believe that he has a bridge to sell you) In an interview with a TV reviewer for the Kansas City Star, Griffin once again made the claim that the extreme leftward tilt that MSNBC has taken over the last few years was a complete accident and that they aren't "tied to ideology" like Fox News is. Griffin also attacked Fox News saying that, "you can't trust a word they say."

It all started when Aaron Barnhart of the Star asked Griffin for his reaction to statements made by Fox News executive John Moody who said that MSNBC only gained their current market share because of the "messianic ranting" of its anchors, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews. This set Griffin off at the outset of the interview.

Yesterday, Gateway Pundit noticed what he called an "Uh-Oh... This wasn't supposed to happen" event for presidential candidate Barack Obama:

An amazing article appeared in the mainstream news today. McClatchy actually reported that Obama's church merges Marxism and Christian Gospel and preaches that the white church in America is the Antichrist because it supported slavery and segregation.

That they did. But how did they headline it, and how many McClatchy newspapers actually ran the story?

Margaret Talev's Thursday, March 20 description of the fundamental doctrines of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) does get right to the point. Talev even goes so far as to question the candidate's motivations for his involvement with the church.

Most importantly, which I why I've bolded the related text, Talev notes that while TUCC's radical and racist philosophies will survive the Rev. Wright's retirement, their continued presence will not deter Obama from continuing to attend:

Talk about bending over backwards to excuse racist comments! Charles Coulter, Opinion Page Editor of the Kansas City Star (pictured at right via KC Star's Web site) has said that he's had "Enough" and says that these "attacks on Obama and Jeremiah Wright are ludicrous." Coulter is scolding any of us who take offense that Obama's racist Rev. has said things like "God damn America," and is himself outraged over our "ludicrous" anger over Wright's claims that the U.S. invented AIDS solely to kill black people.

Coulter starts off with this dismissive summary:

So the Rev. Jeremiah Wright made comments that some portray as hate-filled and anti-American.

It's hard not to "portray" Wright's comments as "hate-filled and anti-American" when he said that the U.S. basically deserved the murderous attacks on 9/11/01 that killed thousands of innocent Americans!

In a breaking story, the recently elected Democrat Attorney General of Kansas has found himself caught up in a sex scandal and it's one he isn't even completely denying. A.G. Paul Morrison is admitting that he had a relationship with former staffer, Linda Carter (No, not of TVs Wonder Woman fame). And now, ladies and gentlemen, we get to play one of our favorite sex scandal games, "Democrat or Republican," where we see if in MSM reports we find out if our scandal enmeshed politician is a nasty Republican or a somehow unmentioned Democrat. But THIS story is going to make it hard on our left spinning MSM, because Paul Morrison is both a Democrat AND a Republican -- well, at least he was a Republican until he switched parties in 2005. The MSM are going to lose their tiny minds trying to spin this one!

Here's the story from the Kansas City Star:

Which would you find more desirable in your community: a group that advocates to abide by U.S. law, or one that advocates to break U.S. law? Well, leave it to an American newspaper to present a story as if a member of a group that advocates for America is a less desirable person in the community than a member of a group that promotes ideas against America. In a story on the La Raza Council's threat to move their annual convention out of Kansas City, Missouri, the Kansas City Star has labeled the patriot group The Minutemen a "militant group" yet nowhere is there harsh labels in their story for La Raza, the Hispanic illegal immigrant advocates. In fact, La Raza is treated like a completely respectable organization throughout the story with the Minutemen treated as if they should be something to be ashamed of.

The National Football League has finally acted, suspending former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick indefinitely without pay in the wake of Vick admitting that he was the primary funding behind the dog-fighting operation run from his property. The question now is- what will the NAACP and Vick's media enablers do?