Reuters

In the wake of a rather tragic and tumultuous events regarding American foreign policy in the Middle East, President Barack Obama plans to forego the opportunity for a one-on-one meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to the UN this week.  The reason is simple.  It just could not wait. The president needed to have a sit down with Barbara Walters and the rest of gals at The View.

Patricia Zengerle's coverage of U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine at Reuters assumes that the Democratic former Virginia Governor committed the mother of all gaffes today. I'm not so sure. It may be that David Corn's secret video of Mitt Romney commenting on the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes and are dependent on the government is sending polling data in the opposite direction from what was intended and is starting to rattle Democrats.

Look at how Zengerle framed what Kaine said:

Let's see. The supposed consensus at Real Clear Politics shows Mitt Romney trailing Barack Obama by less than three points. As shown yesterday, one of the most recent five polls used in RCP's calculations from CBS and the New York Times is so cooked that it weighted registered Democrats over registered Republicans by 35%-22% -- so you can easily knock more than a point from Obama's lead for that item alone. Rasmussen has Romney up by two, and Gallup has gone from Obama +6 to Obama +1 in just a week.

So naturally, according to John Whitesides at Reuters, it's Romney's campaign which is "reeling" (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

Well-know journalist Steven Brill, who founded Brill’s Content, recently turned his critical eye to Beef Products Inc. (BPI) and its lawsuit against ABC. Brill, also a legal writer and entrepreneur who also started American Lawyer magazine, said of BPI’s suit: “as an aficionado of these cases, I can report that this is the most detailed, persuasive complaint of its kind that I have ever read.”

Brill’s analysis of the case appeared on Reuters on Sept. 18, and was highly critical of ABC’s attack on the beef industry.

Beef Products Inc. (BPI) filed a lawsuit against ABC News on September 13, claiming that ABC had knowingly and recklessly campaigned against the use of “Lean, Finely Textured Beef,” which ABC dubbed “pink slime.” According to the lawsuit, BPI had to lay off 700 of its 1,300 employees after it lost 60 percent of its business, due to bad publicity from ABC News.

For the past two weeks, NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala September 27.

If you’ve missed a previous blog, recounting the worst of 1988 through 2001, they are here. Today, the worst bias of 2002: Bill Moyers gets the vapors after Republicans win control of Congress; ABC’s Barbara Walters champions Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s dedication to “freedom;” and Reuters charges that “human rights around the world have been a casualty of the U.S. ‘war on terror.’” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

Reuters has noted the one year anniversary coming this Monday of the Coffee Party, oops, I mean Occupy Wall Street. I can be forgiven for the error since both proved to be as big a flop as Joe Scarborough's No Labels. All of these failed movements had one other thing in common: they were given a boost at birth with extreme media hype. However, first the anniversary/obituary from Reuters:

(Reuters) - Occupy Wall Street marks its first anniversary on Monday, and, in a bid to rejuvenate a movement that has failed to sustain momentum after sparking a national conversation about economic inequality last fall, activists plan once again to descend on New York's financial district.

For the past two weeks, NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala September 27.

If you’ve missed a previous blog, recounting the worst of 1988 through 2000, you can find them here. Today, the worst bias of 2001, including shocking displays of moral equivalence after 9/11 and Dan Rather’s salute to Bill Clinton’s honesty. [Quotes and video below the jump.]

First, the bad news from a media coverage standpoint. All three major wire services covering today's report from the Department of Labor on initial unemployment claims characterized the seasonally adjusted result of 374,000 as "unchanged" from last week, but failed to note the 98%-plus probability based on the last 75 weeks of history (only one exception during that time) that the number will be revised upward by 1,000 or more, changing today's "unchanged" number to an increase.

That's bit ironic, given that all three wires at least told readers that last week's 372,000 claims was revised up to 374,000. Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Associated Press had different takes on the meaning of today's results, as will be seen after the jump (bolds are mine):

Sam Youngman at Reuters, and several others have attempted to pounce on a comment about "big business" GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney made at a Minnesota fundraiser on Thursday as some kind of equivalent to President Obama's out-of-touch assertion that "the private sector is doing fine" back in June.

In fact, what Romney actually said in large part explains why the private sector isn't doing fine. Here is the relevant text from Youngman (bolds are mine):

The wire services and other establishment press members appear to be getting more selective in what they will allow into their headlines, particularly omitting items which might hurt Dear Leader.

Take the coverage of yesterday's Employment Situation Summary from the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics. The news was a combination of bad and mediocre (though expectations-beating): The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate increased from 8.2% to 8.3% (or from 8.217% to 8.254%, if you're Obama administration hack Alan Krueger), while the seasonally adjusted number of jobs added was 163,000. Both results are really unacceptable when there's so much not utilized and underutilized labor. Three establishment press headlines avoided mentioning the rate increase, even though it was a major element of the underlying story:

In case you missed it (which wouldn't be surprising given how quiet the press has been since the related report's release, the Department of Labor reported that initial claims for unemployment rose to a seasonally adjusted 386,000 from a review (up, or course) 352,000 the previous week.

An unbylined Reuters report carried at CNBC (HT to an NB tipster) bizarrely described this result as a "rebound," both in its headline and text:

Leading news agency Thompson Reuters has come out of the closet regarding its support for gay causes: it has declared its open opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment in Minnesota to ban gay marriage.

LifeSiteNews.com reported that Reuters officials Mike Suchsland and Rick King sent an e-mail to its employees, declaring: “We believe the Minnesota Marriage Amendment, if passed, would limit our ability to recruit and retain top talent. For this reason, we do not believe that the Amendment would be good for Thomson Reuters or the business community in the state.”

Kim Jong-un, the dictator of North Korea who inherited his position from daddy, Kim Jong-il, now has another toy to play with thanks to being fortunate enough to live through birth. Although the bloated young Kim appears as if he would have difficulty performing even one boot camp pushup, he has just been given control of the entire military due to his promotion to grand marshal of the army.

Jack Kim (no known relation to guess who) of Reuters wrote up the story about this not exactly merit-based promotion. However, Mr. Kim also gave us a buildup about some "sharp change" in North Korea that turned out to be a highly laughable letdown. First the "sharp change" hype:

One might think that yours truly, who has been nagging the establishment press for years over its blind acceptance of seasonally adjusted data in government economic and employment reports, would be pleased to see that the Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber finally got around to making such adjustments the primary focus of his final report on the most recently released unemployment claims numbers on Thursday. His story's headline at the AP's national site even noted that "Seasonal adjustments to economic data can mislead."

That's fine, but it's not yesterday's full story. Rugaber noted that Thursday's report from the Department of Labor (DOL) -- that 350,000 initial jobless claims were filed after seasonal adjustment -- was influenced by the relatively light level of summer shutdown-related layoffs in the auto industry. But he totally and all too conveniently missed the fact that this year's number looked better after seasonal adjustment than last year's comparable week primarily because, as will be seen later, this year's seasonal adjustment factor was so inexplicably different. First, some excerpts from Rugaber's report:

When George Zimmerman shot black teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, on February 26, the media were quick to accuse the 28-year-old Hispanic of being a racist, but new information gathered by the FBI indicates that Zimmerman did not shoot the youth because of his race.

Dozens of friends, coworkers and neighbors indicated that the neighborhood watch volunteer became involved in an altercation with Martin because of the “hoodie” or hooded sweatshirt the youth was wearing. Indeed, the FBI report released on Thursday included an interview with Sanford Police Detective Christopher Serino, the lead investigator in the case, who said that members of local gangs, who call themselves "Goons," often wear hoodies.

The ACLU and the Center for Reproductive Rights are trying to keep Arizona safe for late-term abortionists. But they must not be labeled as liberal, or even in the usual argot (as AP showed) as “abortion-rights groups.” The Reuters headline (repeated by Yahoo and other online aggregators) is “Rights groups file suit challenging Arizona abortion ban.”

The story by David Schwartz repeated that line: “Rights groups challenged a controversial Arizona law banning most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy on Thursday, seeking to block the measure before takes effect in early August.” The ban is controversial, not the killing babies that would be viable outside the womb. Once again, liberals are fighting Jan Brewer:

Not only is the Associated Press aptly currently described as the Administration's Press -- as least as long as the White House's current occupant remains there -- it also seems to be serving as the Administration's Protection.

In a story about the "Lie-bor" scandal, wherein British banks have admitted to colluding to set the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) -- arguably the world’s most important benchmark for interest rates -- artificially low, AP reporter Martin Crutsinger "somehow" forgot that current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was President of the New York Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank during much of the time period in which Congressional investigators are interested. Clearly, they want to know what Geithner knew, and when he knew it. The first three paragraphs of Crutsinger's writeup, followed by his sole context-free mention of Geithner, follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):

On Tuesday, Tom Brown at Reuters (HT CounterContempt.com aka "Republican Party Animals") wrote about the case of Quartavious Davis, a 20 year-old sentenced to life (and then some) after being "convicted of participating in a string of armed robberies in the Miami area in 2010."

In the process, Brown, whose column title was inadvertently humorous ("Insight: Florida man sees 'cruel' face of U.S. justice"), demonstrated his lack of knowledge and failure to confirm through research by asserting that "United States ... prisons house fully one-quarter of all the prisoners in the world, most of them black." As David Stein at the linked blog noted, this statement isn't merely untrue, it's most sincerely untrue (link was in original):

All the attention focused on today's ObamaCare ruling was bound to have some effect in drowning out this news development, but on its own merits, it's certainly one the media would rather ignore anyway. Yesterday, a federal judge -- a Clinton appointee no less -- refused to issue an injunction that would halt Florida's effort to clean up its voter rolls of noncitizens. The Obama/Holder Department of Justice is suing Florida in an attempt to thwart the state's voter roll cleanup effort.

"The decision by U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle applies to Washington's request for a temporary halt and is not a final ruling in the case," the Reuters news wire reported. Today's Washington Post placed the story at the bottom of page A4 with the headline, "Request to keep Florida from purging voter rolls is denied."

So here's how it appears to me and I suspect many other news readers, never mind the real motivations. At the Associated Press, when you're covering situations like suicide bomber attacks on Christian churches in Nigeria yesterday, you hold out as long as you can in speculating about who is responsible, even though Islamist Boko Haram terrorists (and only Boko Haram terrorists) have claimed credit for previous attacks in that country, and even though no other religion on earth generates large numbers of people who claim to be its adherents who are willing to blow themselves up so they can kill as many infidels as possible.

Then, once the inevitable claim of responsibility arrives, you treat it as old news (the bombings were a whole 24-36 hours ago, y'know), focus your headline and coverage on "Christian" reprisals instead (even though there is no element of Christian doctrine which sanctions random reprisals), and identify who carried out the attacks as late as you possibly, so it will end up not making most broadcast and many print reports. Here are excerpts:

It would appear that the establishment press is determined to portray a "both sides are at fault" equivalency as much as possible in Nigeria where almost none exists.

Earlier today, Patrick Poole at the PJ Tatler pointed out that a brief initial Associated Press item from Lagos would cause a person, in Poole's words, to "come away mystified as to why these churches were subject to apparently random 'violence.'" He specifically objected to the vagueness of a sentence claiming that "Churches have been increasingly targeted by violence in Nigeria." Later more detailed dispatches from Reuters and the AP aren't much more helpful, especially as they both fail to tag the principal perpetrators of the violence, the Boko Haram, as the terrorists that they are.

Sometimes it takes a bit of exertion to disprove an assertion made by an establishment press reporter. Not this time. Today's Department of Labor report on initial unemployment claims told us that such filings "unexpectedly" (as relayed by Reuters and Bloomberg) rose to 386,000 from an upwardly revised (of course) 380,000 the previous week; expectations were for a fall to 375,000. About an hour after DOL's release, Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, told readers that "Applications fell steadily during the fall and winter but have since leveled off."

Well, this one can be taken care of in one easy chart. It starts with what was essentially the last week of winter (the week ended March 24) and goes through the week ended June 9 covered in today's release, with an extra 3,000 added to the most current week to reflect next week's likely upward adjusted (such adjustments during the past sixty-plus weeks have averaged about 3,900).

We begin tonight with what has become by any measure a pretty massive protest movement. While it goes by the official name ‘Occupy Wall Street,’ it has spread steadily and far beyond Wall Street, and it could well turn out to be the protest of this current era. ---Brian Williams on Oct. 5, 2011 gushing with extreme hype over OWS.

Despite all the friendly hype given to the Occupy Wall Street protests by much of the mainstream media, OWS is now in its death throes according to this Reuters report by Chris Francescani. He also notes that as OWS is about to be taken off life support, the much maligned Tea Party movement is doing quite well by contrast:

When a nun tows her vows, she pledges among other things obedience to the Catholic Church and its teachings. So when a sister writes a book on sexual ethics that in various ways contradicts Church teachings and refuses for six years to recant, is it really all that shocking when the Vatican issues a rebuke (and an extremely mild one at that)?

That's exactly what has happened in the case of Sister Margaret A. Farley, whom the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith rebuked yesterday* for her 2006 book Just Love: A framework for Christian Sexual Ethics. But to Reuters's Philip Pullella, the Vatican is waging war on a "popular American nun." From Pullella's June 4 story headlined "Vatican attacks popular U.S. nun over sexuality book" (emphases mine):

CBS This Morning stood out as the only Big Three network morning show on Thursday to cover a conservative group's allegation that the Obama administration gave a movie director and writer "special access to government officials involved in the commando operation that killed Osama bin Laden," as reported by Reuters on Wednesday. ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today ignored the story.

Correspondent Chip Reid outlined that "the documents...obtained by Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group...reveal that director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal...met with top national security officials; gained access to Seal Team 6; and visited the CIA."

Last week, what the Department of Labor had originally reported as a dip in new unemployment claims the previous week (from 368,000 to 367,000) was revised into an increase (to 370,000). This week, what DOL originally reported was a no-change situation (i.e., 370,000) was revised into an increase (to 372,000).

It's getting ever more difficult to accept DOL's ongoing underestimations, which now run to 60 of the 61 most recent weeks I've been able to track (the one exception was a "no change" situation during the week ended June 18, 2011). In covering today's charade, Reuters, Bloomberg, and the Associated Press (aka the Administration's Press), all failed to note that this week's revision to last week turned last week into an increase instead of a no-change. In what should be seen as only a marginal improvement, two of the three (the AP, predictably, was the exception), headlined this week's small initial reduction from last week -- which seems destined to disappear after revision next week -- as "essentially unchanged." Excerpts follow the jump.

To be fair, the full text of what Martin Crutsinger at the Associated Press wrote in the first sentence of what I believe was the final version of his report today on the Census Bureau's new-home sales release was that "Americans bought more new homes last month, the latest evidence that the U.S. housing market could be starting to recover." The other "evidence" he cited related to a small bump reported earlier this week in existing home sales and one homebuilder's improved financial results.

That's pretty thin gruel from which to paint a "could be starting to recover" scenario, especially when it's expressed by someone who isn't a housing expert, i.e., an AP reporter. The only expert Crutsinger cited told him that "Housing could be a pleasant surprise this year." Wow. How profound. Let's take a look at some quotes from experts Thomson Reuters was able to find. Readers will note that the variations on word "bottom" occur quite frequently (quotes are not in the same order as they appeared at the link):

On Tuesday morning at 8:30 a.m. ET, the Commerce Department reported that seasonally adjusted U.S. retail sales in April rose by 0.1%. In an 11:12 a.m. report via the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, carried at the Detroit News ("U.S. consumers hold back retail sales, even as gas prices fall"), Martin Crutsinger was appropriately not impressed: "Lower gas prices in April weren't enough to embolden U.S. consumers to spend much more elsewhere. The Commerce Department said retail sales rose only 0.1 percent last month."

Look how things changed in a late afternoon AP report currently carried at its national site co-authored by Crutsinger and Christopher Rugaber, reworked in time to go into most newspapers' print editions Wednesday morning:

Reuters correspondent Margot Roosevelt touted over the weekend that “Weary Warriors Favor Obama.” According to the latest Reuters-Ipsos poll, “If the election were held today, Obama would win the veteran vote by as much as seven points over Romney, higher than his margin in the general population.”

Under the heading “Fading Cool Factor,” Roosevelt summarized that many veterans sound like Obama did in the last election cycle, pessimistic about the wars Bush started: