Reuters

This updates the "Supply-Side Stunner" post (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) from Tuesday. The business press has not yet noticed this news.

The last Daily Treasury Statement for April published yesterday shows just how impressive what is probably the supply-side tax cuts' last hurrah really was:

Reuters, the British newswire notorious for refusing to call terrorist organizations anything more incendiary than "militant," is now worrying that a Bush administration decision to declassify intelligence that makes Syria look bad may harm "diplomacy."

In their April 24 article, "U.S. lays out Syria intelligence, may harm diplomacy," reporters Arshad Mohammed and Paul Eckert seek to lay blame at the feet of the Bush administration should "diplomacy" fail and/or Syria grow belligerent towards Israel:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States laid out intelligence on Thursday it believes shows North Korea helped Syria build a suspected nuclear reactor destroyed by Israel last year, a step that may complicate its diplomacy both on the Korean Peninsula and in the Middle East.

In breaking its official silence on the mysterious September 6 Israeli air strike, the Bush administration is taking the risk that Syria could be angered by the public disclosures and could seek to retaliate against Israel.

In case you hadn't heard, the world is running scared about the world running out of rice.

As a result, here in America, various food retailers have actually begun rationing the amount of the white stuff consumers are allowed to buy.

Deliciously -- pun definitely intended -- the CEO of the nation's leading warehouse club, Costco's James Sinegal, blamed a lot of the problem on the media.

As marvelously reported by Reuters Wednesday (emphasis added throughout):

Imagine for a moment that a Fox News reporter was arrested in Central Park early in the morning with a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals. Do you think this little nuance would be included in press coverage of this bizarre event?

Probably in the headline and the opening paragraph, right?

Well, for some reason, though news outlets did report the odd happenings in NYC Friday morning when CNN's Richard Quest was officially arrested for loitering and drug possession, from what I can tell, only the New York Post included the "kinky" elements in its article Saturday (emphasis added, h/t NBer Gat New York, picture courtesy CNN):

Reuters highlights a great little tale filled with anti-gun bias and bad reporting, all topped with an extremely misleading photo that presents a wonderful example of biased "reporting" at its worst. The story is about a German man who was "crowded out of his home" by his gun collection but the photo is of a gun store display in America. What the two have to do with each other is anybody's guess. But then we find out the man wasn't crowded out by his gun collection after all. Just a little thought put to the Reuters tale reveals that the whole thing is bunk.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German man was such an avid collector of weapons and other paraphernalia that he ran out of space at home and had to sleep in a hotel, neighbors said following the 71-year-old's death... Executors found an arsenal of weaponry and assorted goods at the man's two-story home in the western city of Aachen...

Wow, it must have been hundreds and hundreds of guns that caused this man to flee from his two-story home to a hotel, right?

Well, not really.

In a post earlier this evening, Lynn Davidson at NewsBusters chronicled the myriad errors in a March 31 Reuters "Factbox" relating to the Kyoto Protocol.

Among the errors Davidson noted was the wire service's claim that "The United States ..... came out against the pact in 2001" -- implying, but not actually stating, that the US government was perfectly happy with Kyoto until mean old George W. Bush came along. This is, of course, patently untrue.

The error made by Erin Gartner of the Associated Press in covering Chelsea Clinton's appearance at the University of North Carolina on behalf of her mother's presidential bid was more obvious. It is just the latest in a long line of direct or attributed misstatements the AP has let stand about the treaty's history in the US (HTs to Captain Ed at Hot Air and Instapundit):

What does it say about Reuters' environmental coverage when the news organization can't even get a basic “factbox” correct?

This March 31 Reuters “factbox” was supposed to explain “What is the Kyoto Protocol?” Instead, the media conglomerate pushed a biased eco-agenda and omitted anything that cast a negative light on the treaty or revealed problems. There was no mention of Kyoto participants failing to meet their targets or Japan trying to renegotiate because Kyoto is harming its economy. Reuters failed to report that greenhouse gas emissions are rising in the European Union and in many Kyoto-participating countries, such as Canada. Some, like Austria and Great Britain, are actually doing worse than the US in emissions growth. By skewing the data included in this factbox, Reuters massaged data to fit an agenda and crossed into advocacy journalism.

Reuters began by framing the US as the bad guy (all bold mine):

The Institute for Supply Management issued its March Manufacturing Report on Business today:

PMI at 48.6%

Economic activity in the manufacturing sector failed to grow in March, while the overall economy grew for the 77th consecutive month, say the nation's supply executives in the latest Manufacturing ISM Report On Business®.

The report was issued today by Norbert J. Ore, C.P.M., chair of the Institute for Supply Management™ Manufacturing Business Survey Committee. "The manufacturing sector failed to grow in March as the PMI fell below 50 percent for the second consecutive month.

Just because the ISM says the economy has grown won't necessarily make it so when Uncle Sam's Bureau of Economic Analysis releases the first quarter 2008 GDP report late this month, but it beats the alternative.

The real fun comes in looking over the reporting on the ISM results. Were they better or worse than "expected"? Well, it depends on who you ask.

Update at bottom of post: Williams responds (18:24 EDT)

I have to hand it to the AP this time. They actually noted the political party affiliation of another Democrat in legal hot water. So did CNN.com and Reuters.

But for some reason, MSNBC's Pete Williams left out the party affiliation of Louisiana's Rep. William Jefferson (D) in this March 31 item at the First Read blog:

In something of a surprise, the U.S. Supreme Court today declined to hear an appeal involving the FBI's unprecedented search of the Capitol Hill offices of Congressman William Jefferson.

A federal appeals court ruled that the FBI wrongly used its own agents look through the material seized to determine what might be covered by congressional privilege. This is a considerable victory for Jefferson, largely validating his objections to the search and giving him certain bragging rights. But prosecutors claim they have sufficient evidence independent of the search. The cash in his freezer, for example, was found well before Jefferson's offices were searched.

As a recovering journalist, it has always amazed me how little journalists, even those specializing in financial reporting, know about the basic principles of economics. Similarly, it has always fascinated me how otherwise reasonable reporters can be reduced to self-righteous anti-capitalist ideologues, spouting the kind of anti-market drivel that one might have heard at a Communist Party meeting in the 1930s.

Nowadays journalists routinely attack lenders who take a chance on the poor. Take the case of “‘Pay day’ loans exacerbate housing crisis,” an article by Nick Carey of Reuters. In it, Carey lectures his readers, identifying with certainty what is making the “housing crisis” worse. The culprit he identifies is the payday lending industry, a subset of the subprime sector so regularly vilified by liberals, including Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

It's not Ben Bernanke's fault, according to CNBC's Maria Bartiromo.

Bartiromo appeared on NBC's March 23 "Meet the Press" with CNBC's "Street Signs" host Erin Burnett as the program's featured guests.

"Meet the Press" host Tim Russert asked Bartiromo and CNBC's Erin Burnett if Bernanke was "up to the task" to take on problems with the U.S. economy. Bartiromo didn't blame the Fed chief for the current economic environment, but defended Bernanke and said the foundation of the housing problems was in place prior to his tenure.

"I really don't think you can blame Ben Bernanke for this, Tim," Bartiromo said. "You know, I think that he is, as Erin said, throwing the kitchen sink, doing a lot at this point. And remember, he's a new chairman. You know, so what was put in place before he was actually in this role has set us up for this."

There was recently a brief flurry of a few incorrect labels of [former] NY Governor Eliot Spitzer -- noting him as a Republican. Perhaps the most inventive excuse for that mistake comes from Reuters via Newsbusters reader Doug M. Doug had sent an e-mail inquiring as to why Spitzer was mislabeled in this story. Here's the response from Reuters' Vincent Baldino:

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you but I wanted to look into
this. Our online photo editor just got back to me and confirmed that the (R) means that he is the person on the right side of the photo. It has nothing to do with democrat or republican.

Take a look at the picture and corresponding caption again. Being that only Spitzer and his wife are in the photo, why is it even necessary to indicate that the former governor is "on the right"? Doesn't "wife" denote "female?" Where else could Eliot Spitzer possibly be but on the right? In addition, wouldn't "(at right)" be the common method of indicating direction in a photograph?

You be the judge on whether Reuters' excuse holds any water.

Like Colored and MindedThis is past a bit ridiculous, is it not?

Agence France-Presse (AFP) yesterday disseminated to its client list a headline and photograph caption labeling sex scandalized and self-ousted New York Governor Eliot Spitzer an (R), when he is in fact a (D) -- emocrat.

They then responded -- to correspondence on the subject of their error and the error itself -- rather meekly.

AFP having only corrected their copy -- leaving myriad errors strewn throughout the print and web worlds -- left wide open the possibility that others would follow their poor suit.

And indeed someone has.

[Update, 5:39 pm Eastern: The Acton Institute's office in Rome has provided an English translation of Bishop Girotti's interview. In it, the bishop has his own criticism for the media. "[I]t is necessary also to denounce the emphasis given to the media that on a daily basis casts discredit on the Church.]

A supposed list of "new sins" from the Vatican, such as pollution and genetic manipulation, made headlines across the world on Monday. The list actually didn’t come from any official Catholic Church document, but from an interview of a bishop that was published in L'Osservatore Romano, the "semi-official" newspaper in Vatican City, and it exposed the mainstream media’s fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity in general, and the Catholic Church specifically.

L'Osservatore Romano printed the interview of Gianfranco Girotti, a bishop who is a member of the Vatican’s Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary, in its March 9 edition. In it, Girotti discussed "new forms of social sin," and gave examples such genetic manipulation and drug trafficking. Girotti, who is the number-two official at the Tribunal, is in the mid-level of the Vatican’s bureaucracy, and wouldn’t make any official decisions on behalf of the Catholic Church.

Despite Girotti’s lack of real authority, the mainstream media hyped up the interview as being authoritative. The Daily Telegraph’s website claimed that Girotti’s list of "new forms of social sin" "replaces the list originally drawn up by Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th Century, which included envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath and pride." Reuters’ article reported that "the Vatican has told the faithful that they should be aware of "new" sins such as causing environmental blight." CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, on Monday’s "The Situation Room," even went so far to say that "some Christian teachings say love thy neighbor and don't lie, cheat, or steal? But might would one more virtue be added -- go green? Find out why the pope says polluting the planet is a sin." And Pope Benedict XVI wasn’t even the one who was interviewed by L'Osservatore Romano!

The Reuters wire service has scoured the countryside of Iraq for opinions about who should be elected to the U.S. presidency. Apparently, either Iraq or the Reuters template offered only two options: (a) "change" from the hasty and stubborn Bush team, or (b) and apathy over how America will never change from its ruinous policy. But isn’t there anyone in Iraq who is grateful for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, or grateful for the American commitment to stay and help build a civil society? Reuters interviewers couldn’t seem to find a one. Reporter Aseel Kami began by underlining the need for change:

Iraqis are avidly watching the 2008 U.S. election race, searching for signs of policy change under a new president and prospects for U.S. troop withdrawals from their country.

"I do not care if the president is a man or a woman, what really matters is the change of American policy towards Iraq," said Muhenad Sahib, a university professor from the southern oil hub of Basra, Iraq's second largest city.

The story reads like a lineup of Iraqis voting rhetorically for Democrats:

Employing children in military units, much less terrorist outfits, is a slam dunk case of human rights abuse. But not to Reuters, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs notes:

Just when you think the mainstream wire services can’t possibly debase themselves any further, they release a photograph like this one, taken by Reuters Palestinian propagandist Ibraheem Abu Mustafa, with an unbelievably sick and distorted caption:

Raul Castro gestures during a meeting of the National Assembly in Havana, February 24, 2008. Photo Reuters/Prensa Latina/Pool

An important trial in France revealed the Pallywood fauxtography machine and its media pipeline. Last week, expert testimony supported media critic Philippe Karsenty's claim that France 2 reporter Charles Enderlin's coverage of the Mohammad al-Dura affair was doctored and staged.

Karsenty appealed a verdict that he libeled Enderlin when he questioned the claim that Israel killed the boy who was crouching behind his father during a gunfight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian shooters. 

Al-Dura's iconic image sped around the world and sold stamps, T shirts and the Second Intifada. It inspired violence, riots, terrorism and became a 21st century Blood Libel. On March 3, Israel's Haaretz reported the stunning news that if the boy and his father were actually shot at all, the bullets could not have come from Israel's position, only the Palestinians' (bold mine throughout):

Daniel Wallis of Reuters reports that Kenyan elders who are hopping mad over the release of the photo of Barack Obama in "traditional Somali attire" and may impose a fine against Hillary Clinton, "payable in cattle, goats, or camels," over the outrage. You can tell it's a Reuters story by this mention in the third paragraph: "Obama has battled a whispering campaign by fringe elements who wrongly say he is Muslim."

Reuters is playing the same Obama '08 game: it's outrageous that Obama would be mistaken for a Muslim, but wow, Muslims really want to demand payment in livestock for anyone who would disparage their beloved Obama. No one is allowed to say anything anti-Obama. Wallis lines up outraged Muslims, foreign and domestic, to denounce Hillary, who, typically, denies authorizing release of the photo, but can't vouch for all of her staff members' activities on their free time. To the Goats and Camels Court:

Grunge and hippie-folk rocker Neil Young, who opposes President Bush's war in Iraq and released an album last year "Living with War" with a song called "Let's Impeach the President," nonetheless came to Bush's defense recently, saying he's a "leader" with perseverance. As Reuters reported (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080213/ap_en_mu/film_neil_young), in a conversation at the Sundance Film Festival, former band mate David Crosby said there should be a law that persons who can't pronounce the word "nuclear" shouldn't have control over nuclear weapons. Neil Young promptly disagreed. As reported: "A lot of people have problems pronouncing words and spelling things correctly. It doesn't mean that they're not intelligent," Young tells Crosby. "You've got to give the guy credit. Do I agree with him? No. Do I think he's stupid? No. Do I think he's a leader? Yes. He led. He took this country where he wanted to take it. And he steadfastly stuck with it all the way."

In an attempt to salvage some degree of credibility for presidential candidate Barack Obama's assertions about military equipment shortages, Reuters reporter Andrew Gray went back to a long-discredited claim planted by a local Tennessee reporter, and resurrected a Donald Rumsfeld quote that was not relevant to his story topic.

First, Gray went to what Obama claimed, and how the Pentagon responded:

During the face-to-face encounter on Thursday evening, Obama said he had heard from an Army captain whose unit had served in Afghanistan without enough ammunition or vehicles.

Obama said it was easier for the troops to capture weapons from Taliban militants than it was "to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief," President George W. Bush.

"I find that account pretty hard to imagine," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

"Chavez inspires left but [is] no icon," insists the headline for a February 21 story by Reuters reporter Frank Jack Daniel. Daniel took time to examine what role Chavez could play in rallying Latin American leftists now that the Fidel Castro has kindly retired to let little hermano Raul take the wheel for a while indefinitely.

Daniel practically makes Chavez sound like the Barack Obama of Latin American Marxism: nice image, but still needs more experience:

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's red beret-wearing President Hugo Chavez has inspired a new generation of Latin American leftists but has a ways to go to achieve the heroic status awarded to his iconic friend Fidel Castro.

The British newswire that strenuously avoids calling a terrorist a terrorist also has trouble identifying the radical religious motivations for rioters setting Denmark ablaze.

Roger Kimball of Pajamas Media has the story:

Consider the opening of this story from Reuters about the latest rash of rioting in Copenhagen:

Danish youths riot for sixth night [Update: make that the seventh straight night]

Gangs of rioters set fire to cars and garbage trucks in northern Copenhagen on Friday, the sixth night of rioting and vandalism that has spread from the capital to other Danish cities, police said on Saturday.

[...]

The death of Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyah is a good opportunity to call to mind the Reuters news wire's refusal to call a terrorist a terrorist.

A February 13 story by Tom Perry and Laila Bassam contained the word "terrorist," but only in quotes from sources. The word "terrorism" occurred twice, once in quotes and another when describing a cited source as a "terrorism expert" (emphasis mine).:

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Senior Hezbollah commander Imad Moughniyah, on the United States' most wanted list for attacks on Israeli and Western targets, has been killed by a bomb attack in Damascus, the Lebanese group said on Wednesday.

What does Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and the February 12 "Potomac Primary" have to do with a BlackBerry outage? Beats me, but apparently Reuters writer Wojtek Dabrowski found a way to work the presidential candidate's campaign staff into his Toronto-datelined February 12 story, "RIM reports 'critical' BlackBerry outage.'

RIM's worldwide subscriber base reached about 12 million people by late last year, mainly executives, politicians, lawyers and other professionals who rely on the BlackBerry to send secure e-mails. Sleeker new models are also catching on with students and others outside professional circles.

Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, said, "While the outage did confirm our widespread addiction to BlackBerry service, fortunately it did not cause more than a temporary inconvenience."

The fate of a so-called economic stimulus bill is currently bogged down in the Senate as Republicans and Democrats disagree on how much to spend.

Both sides are playing to the crowd trying to take credit for helping prop up the economy and accuse the other side of trying to block economic aide. It's classic political theater in that way but also in another--left-leaning reporters just can't help but frame things in the way that the congressional Democrats would like them to.

The Associated Press was one of the worst offenders, running a story headlined "Republicans join to block stimulus bill" which waited until the end of the third graf to state the Republican viewpoint that the package was not fiscally responsible. To hear that view, however, you have to wade through more than a few bleeding heart sentences:

Proving once again in good European form that they think nothing American is democratic, good or fair, Reuters gives us a pity party for CAIR who is whining that they "feel left out" of the 2008 presidential elections. With the headline blaring "Some non-Christians feel left out of election," Reuters gives us a tale of woe guaranteed to make Europeans shake their heads knowingly that we Americans are really just Christian nuts out to oppress all minorities. One does wonder, however, how CAIR would like it if Muslims did become a focus of the 2008 elections? In light of current events it is doubtful if such a focus would be favorable to them, so, were I them, I'd be happy no one is paying attention to them!

In a U.S. election campaign where presidential candidates from both major parties have talked openly about their Christian faith, some non-Christians feel shut out or turned off.

Listen, this is a majority Christian nation and anyone wanting to get elected is naturally going to talk as closely as possible to that majority. This country is still over 75% Christian, so it is a logical presumption that citizens whose religion represents only a few percentage points would not be a focus of a politician's efforts!

Remember that touching picture of Yassar Arafat donating his blood to the 9/11 victims that was conveniently published after CNN ran footage of Palestinians cheering and handing out candy to celebrate the destruction in New York? Now France 2 journalist Charles Enderlin says that photo was staged; Arafat never gave blood.

The photos were taken by an AP photographer with a history of biased journalism and given captions that read like “a press release covering talking points.” Power Line's Scott Johnson reported Enderlin's revelation in a January 24 Weekly Standard article (bold mine throughout):

As Joel Pollak recounted online at the site Guide to the Perplexed [ed. link here], Enderlin told his Harvard audience "that Yasser Arafat had faked his blood donation to the victims of the September 11th attacks. Enderlin said the event had been staged for the media to counteract the embarrassing television images of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks."