Wire Services/Media Companies

Opting to include a photo to supplement the reporting by Michael Shear and Cecilia Kang in their April 14 front-pager "Obama Lifts Broad Set of Sanctions Against Cuba", Washington Post editors made a caption choice that served to skew the story presentation in a way favorable to those who argue for lifting the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba.

"The president's new policies lift limits on Americans sending money to their relatives in struggling Cuba," reads the Post caption below a photograph by AP's Javier Galeano (shown above at right). In the photo, a man and woman are shown pushing a beat-up old car down the street.

Here's the AP's caption for the photo:

In a report this morning  on the situation off the coast on Somalia, Associated Press reporters Elizabeth A. Kennedy and Paul Jelinek seemed oddly sympathetic to the cause of the terrorists in training the world insists on calling "pirates," almost to the point of grudging admiration.

Check out some of the words the AP pair used in their 9:15 a.m. dispatch (saved at host for fair use and discussion purposes, and for future reference if or when the text changes) following the "breaking news alert" at the link:

Undeterred Somali pirates hijack 4 more ships

Undeterred by U.S. and French hostage rescues that killed five bandits, Somali pirates brazenly hijacked three more ships in the Gulf of Aden, the waterway at the center of the world's fight against piracy.

..... The latest trophy for the pirates was the M.V. Irene E.M., a Greek-managed bulk carrier sailing from the Middle East to South Asia, said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur.

The Irene was attacked and seized in the middle of the night Tuesday - a rare tactic for the pirates.

**Update: McClatchy Changes Headline**

OK, before we even get into the latest banal attack on Governor Palin's extended family perpetrated by the McClatchy newspaper chain, I would like to ask a few questions about "Those crazy Palins: Todd's half sister indicted in break-ins."

Has McClatchy ever had any headlines like this: "Those Crazy Kennedys"? After all, there is a wealth of craziness with that demented clan. Or since we recently had Obama's half brother denied a visa to England over his rape charges -- not to mention his illegal immigrant aunt -- how about a headline like this: "Those Crazy Obamas"? Did we ever see a headline about "Those Crazy Clintons" when we discovered all the financial misdeeds and drug busts of Hillary and Bill's extended family? How about Carter? Did good ol' Billy Carter ever cause McClatchy to say "Those Crazy Carters"?

The Chairman of the Associated Press had some sharp words for those darned ol' Internet interlopers out there. He said he's "mad as hell" over those who "walk off with our work." Though Chairman Dean Singleton didn't exactly specify who he was talking about, according to Politico, the wire agency has been targeting Google, Bloggers and news aggregator sites such as Huffington Post of late.

So, what does it mean? How far will the AP go to protect its work? Are there court cases soon to be seen?

I got this e-mail yesterday from CNN shortly after Uncle Sam's Monthly Treasury Statement for March was released:

That was indeed a serious piece of news. Only halfway through the year, the federal government's deficit for fiscal 2009 is already larger by far than any previous year's deficit.

So I was curious to see how the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger might work this story to minimize the damage to Dear Leader, President 'Prompter himself, Barack Obama.

That Crutsinger and AP intended to go above and beyond the call of duty was obvious in the headline. Wait for it:

Reuters is only the latest wire service to go way over the top in taking pity on President Obama for having to deal with nasty things that intervene to disturb Dear Leader's apparent solitude.

At the same time, Reuters seems to be characterizing the situations in Iran and North Korea as "distractions" that are equivalent to that being posed by the Somali pirates.

I don't know how else you can interpret the way this Reuters article by Steve Holland currently appears:

The Associated Press's determination to keep the identity of Democrats in trouble or under investigation hidden is indeed strong and persistent.

Its report (as of 11:03 p.m.; a copy is saved here at my web host for future reference) on the launch of an ethics probe into Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr.'s relationship with ousted former Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, particularly relating to Jackson’s bid to be appointed to the Senate seat left vacant by President Barack Obama, does not refer to Jackson or Blago as a Democrat. Any more, that's relatively unremarkable.

What is a bit more remarkable is that the underlying Chicago Sun-Times story on the impending probe refers to Jackson twice as a "D-Ill," once in the report's very first sentence and once in the picture caption copied at the top right (which, of all things, is apparently an AP file photo).

This means that AP had to proactively scrub the Democratic Party references already present in its underlying source.

Here's how the Sun-Times's story began:

When you visit NewsBusters.org and read a report taking the Associated Press to task for its continuous leftward bias, are you reading "stolen" AP content, or are you reading legitimate news? Is criticism of AP's work fair use? What is "fair use," anyway? Could the AP sue critics?

These questions might be on the AP's radar if a recent report in The New York Times is any indication. AP is attempting to create new policies to govern who uses AP content and where it is used. The APs attention to these issues could have long range impact on blogs and newsfeeds on the Internet.

At an April 4 news conference in Strasbourg, France (White House transcript here), President Obama referred to a language that doesn't exist (bold is mine; HT to DrewM at Ace of Spades):

It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There's a lot of -- I don't know what the term is in Austrian -- wheeling and dealing -- and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics.

Apparently none of Obama's 12 teleprompters (their existence was cited a week ago at the UK's Evening Standard, and noted yesterday at NewsBusters and BizzyBlog) were able to guide Obama's dialect-challenged utterance in time.

Amazingly, Tom Raum of the Associated Press in effect made the same mistake (HT to an e-mailer) when he cited the above Obama quote and failed to note that there isn't an Austrian language. Raum and who knows how many editors surely had several hours to get it right, and didn't.

Reuters published a story today, April 4, detailing some nonsense from a Taliban terrorist who has claimed "responsibility" for Friday's shooting rampage in Binghamtom, New York. The question that comes to mind is why? Why did Reuters imagine this idiotic claim, this obvious lie, was worth reporting to the world? Does Reuters not have the good sense God gave a door knob? Why would Reuters pass this Taliban propaganda off as news?

From Peshawar, Pakistan, Reuters reports that this Taliban leader wannabe has said that the murderous rampage perpetrated by an unhinged Vietnamese immigrant was done by his "men." This half-wit terrorist claims that he ordered the "men" to attack the U.S. because of the use of Predator drones that have been so successful in cutting out so many of those nits in their Pakistani strongholds.

But we all know this "acceptance of responsibility" is an outright lie. We may not know why Jiverly Voong went off the deep end, but we know he had zilch to do with Pakistan. So, why did Reuters think it a story worthy of reporting? There can only be one reason.

Don't you love it when the Old Media dredges up some partisan hack Democrat supporter and presents them as an "expect" that is never identified as a partisan political hack? Well, you may not love it, but it sure seems to happen an awful lot. And here we see another example of that lame bias by our old friend Anne Sutton, an AP writer that is renown for her hit pieces on Governor Palin and her family.

This AP piece is supposedly describing "Sarah Palin's Bad Week," in which mountains are made of molehills over and over again. Little of this "report" is of note but one thing does stand out. That would be the quoting by writer Sutton of Ross Baker. Baker is described as a "political science professor " from Rutgers University (New Jersey) and is featured saying how bad things are for Palin these days.

Is it some sort of amazing, newsworthy revelation that teen romance is sometimes a rocky road? Is it news that family can be troublesome when it results in out-of-wedlock birth? The Associated Press seems to think it is, at least if one of those teens is Governor Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol.

Do you care that punk Levi Johnston is bawling to the press that Governor Palin is supposedly a controlling Grandmother? Especially in light of the fact that this kid is an uneducated, immature, unserious lout? Well, if YOU don't the AP sure as heck does.

"Iowa Gives Gay Marriage a Thumbs Up," trumpets the front page teaser headline on ABCNews.com. But, the subhead explains, it was "Iowa's Supreme Court" not the people via their legislature or direct referendum that opened the door to same-sex marriage by finding the state's ban on the ceremony "violates [the state] Constitution."

The accompanying photo illustration (shown at right) depicts two (presumably) masculine, wedding-band-sporting left hands embracing. In the background is a long, unfurled rainbow flag, held aloft by marchers in a parade.

The story itself was filed by Amy Lorentzen of the Associated Press.  Lorentzen jumped quickly into the jubilant reaction of gay marriage activists, but found no space for comment from traditional values advocates in her 18-paragraph story. 

Truth to power? Give me a break.

Mark Levin mentioned a report by McClatchy's Steven Thomma tonight on his show. When I heard Levin read from it, I assumed that when I went to the web page that McClatchy would label it as "analysis," or "background," or something similar.

Nope. Apparently, it's supposed to be a straight news story.

Thomma writes as if world peace and civility were salvaged because President Obama supposedly brokered an agreement on an important matter. It wasn't a treaty, which would require ratification by the Senate. It was a (non-binding) pact, "calling for" certain things. And the thing that was the hang-up was (I'm not really typing this, am I?) whether or not certain tax havens, which everyone who needs to know about already is fully aware of, should have their names published in an attempt to shame them. Not the names of the people taking advantage of the havens, just the havens themselves.

As fellow NewsBuster Noel Sheppard would say, "I kid you not."

Shake your head in amazement as Thomma actually treats the naming of well-known tax havens as important and takes dictation from the White House:

On Tuesday, both USA Today and the Associated Press highlighted guarded optimism that seemed a bit beyond the justifiable after the release of March's sales results for the auto industry.

Though there is perhaps some cause for hope, both reports made more out of the industry's roughly 25% sales pickup from February to March (compared to a typical 20% in previous years) than was justified. More importantly, both reports failed to specifically cite:

• Continued market-share losses at bailed-out General Motors and Chrysler.
• Ford's disproportionate share of that decent but not exceptional industrywide February to March pickup (seen in a chart after the jump).

Both AP and USAT particularly emphasized that February to March improvement. USA Today's James R. Healey and Chris Woodyard brought it up almost immediately:

The Associated Press did a masterful job of portraying Republican Governors as perpetrating "noncompliance" for how they want to spend Obama's education stimulus money. But, even as the AP spends the top half of a story wagging fingers at those nasty Republicans for not spending Obama's generous gift the right way, buried in the story it is revealed that the fault is really with how the stimulus bill was written, not in how GOP governors wish to spend it. Ah, but it's much better to make Republicans look like bad guys than it is to blame Democrat Congressmen for writing a bad bill, isn't it?

Even worse, the point AP is trying to promulgate is that these evil governors are hurting "the children" by not spending on education the way Obama says they should. Yes, the AP and the Obama administration are again hiding massive increases in federal control behind help for "the children." It's agenda journalism at its finest... or worst, depending on your point of view.

Proving that the left cannot tell the difference between "racism" and "criticism," the AP posted a lengthy March 30 story confusing and conflating the two as it pertains to attacks on President Obama. As far as the AP is concerned it seems the whole country is running around with burning crosses and wearing pointy hoods aiming to cast racial epithets at Obama at every turn. It may as well still be the year 1860 around here.

The AP starts its piece by informing the reader that "racial slurs continue" against the president "despite" his "historic achievement." But the main problem with the piece is that much of the report details political attacks that aren't really racial in nature but are instead just those normal sorts of political attacks we see against any president. Granted they are tailored for Obama (like his citizenship and religion questions) but they aren't really "racial" attacks per se. Still, the AP illegitimately lumps any and all attacks against Obama under the rubric of "racial slurs."

Yesterday, in the process of passing on news that bloggers such as Ed Morrissey at Hot Air and outfits like the Heritage Foundation were onto earlier, Bloomberg's Kevin Hassett delivered a stinging indictment of the establishment media for being asleep at the switch (the sole exception appears to be a video report at PBS). But while he does a good job identifying the problem and indicting journalists for ignoring the news, his prescription for a solution is badly wanting.

The news? The days of Social Security surpluses are over, six to possibly eight years earlier than was thought to be the case just a year ago.

Here are excerpts from Hassett's commentary ("Recession Bites Into Social Security’s Surplus"). His first word reveals what he thinks of the nation's political elites, and of the media that are supposed to be watching them:

No environment-related historical myth seems stronger than the one claiming that if it weren't for the Republican Congress in the late 1990s and President George W. Bush after that, the US would have ratified the Kyoto Treaty and would be under mandatory strictures designed to combat alleged "global warming" -- which, as frequently noted here and elsewhere, has been, depending on the source referenced, on hiatus for eight years to over a decade.

In an article about the Obama administration's upcoming involvement in international negotiations about so-called "climate change" after what he calls "eight years on the sidelines" ("US takes new climate change agenda to global talks"), the Associated Press's Dina Capiello continued the wire service's dishonorable long-term perpetuation of the GOP-bad, Dems-good myth (just a few previous posts on other AP examples are here, here, and here at NewsBusters; here, here, and here at BizzyBlog) by writing that:

And unlike 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was drafted, there is now a Democratic-controlled Congress moving to embrace mandatory limits on greenhouse gases.

Yeah, if it weren't for those nasty Republicans, Bill Clinton and Al Gore would have gotten Kyoto ratified, and all would be right with the world.

Uh, not exactly.

Kevin Chappell of Ebony Magazine was among the reporters preselected to ask Dear Leader Barack Obama a question at his Tuesday press conference. Here was Chappell's question:

Thank you, Mr. President. A recent report found that as a result of the economic downturn, one in 50 children are now homeless in America. With shelters at full capacity, tent cities are sprouting up across the country. In passing your stimulus package, you said that help was on the way, but what would you say to these families, especially children, who are sleeping under bridges and in tents across the country?

Chappell's question was based on a report issued by the National Center on Family Homelessness. NCFH asserts that about 1.5 million children under 18 are homeless, just over 2% of the roughly 74 million children in the US (total population by each year of age is downloadable at a link at this Census Bureau page).

Last summer, as I noted in a Pajamas Media column, an advisory group known as a civil jury in San Francisco inadvertently proved how detached from reality NCFH's most recent scare figure is, and how generally bogus homelessness stats are, when it pegged the homeless population in the City by the Bay at (get ready) ....:

I said earlier this year (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) that there was reason to believe that 2009 might be the year of the newspaper bailout.

Now one of Maryland's two Democratic US senators thinks he has come up with a way to subsidize and save them -- while simultaneously turning them into house organs for his party.

Ben Cardin (picture at right is from his Senate web site) has introduced "The Newspaper Revitalization Act," would accomplish the just-described goals by allowing papers to convert themselves into not-for-profit entities, providing them tax breaks, and .... prohibiting editorials.

Those who know establishment media reporting know that editorial commentary will then become the sole province of left-leaning beat reporters pretending to be strictly fact-based in their supposedly straight news stories and "analyses," while traditional newspaper editorials, which against all odds still seem to lean barely to the right when averaged out nationwide, will disappear.

Here's how Thomas Ferraro of Reuters describes what Cardin has cooked up:

Here's how the Associated Press's Matthew Brown chose to open his organization's initial story (HT Michelle Malkin) on the Montana plane crash where 14 people died, including seven young children, their parents, and the pilot:

Because, y'know, the victims' presumed "ultrarich" socioeconomic status was sooooo important.

Incredibly, Brown's report was not an isolated incident, as the AP played the class card at least two additional times. The first came almost three hours later, as seen in this item carried at TMC.net, as more information about the nature of the crash came out:

I think it is finally getting to the point that when an Old Media story goes out over the wires without mentioning the party affiliation of troubled politicians, people naturally assume that all the criminal actions in said story are being perpetrated by Democrats. But, that assumption aside, we are still seeing reports nearly every day that omit the "Democrat" in any story involving criminal Democrats. Here is yet another one.

The Associated Press posted a story on the FBI's probe of questionable campaign donations to Senator Patty Murray and Representative Norm Dicks of Washington state. The possibly worrisome donations were from PMA Group, a lobbying firm founded by an aide of Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania. With all these politician's names being thrown around in the AP report, though, it is curious that not a one of them were ever identified as Democrats. Not once.

The three largest mainstream media wire services all agreed that supporters of Pope Benedict XVI who dared to stand up to anti-Catholic leftists in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Sunday were extremists of the right of some sort. The Associated Press used the “right-wing” label to describe the faithful Catholics. Both Reuters and the French Agence France-Presse both used the term “far-right youths,” with the AFP going so far as describing the pro-Benedict protesters as  “far-right militants” in another report.

ACT-UP Paris, joined by communists and “green” activists, protested in front of the famed Gothic cathedral to voice opposition to the pontiff’s recent remarks against condom use during his visit to Africa. In addition to holding signs which labeled Benedict XVI an “assassin,” they threw condoms on the ground while giving others to passers-by as people were leaving Mass. The radical left-wing activists skirmished with the supporters of the Pope, leading to the arrest of eleven people by police.

Anyone who has followed the decline of General Motors and Chrysler since the two companies received a combined $17-plus billion in bailout money in December won't be surprised at the news that they need more -- or at the government's convenient weekend timing of the news.

The financial cliff on which Chrysler stands was a given by the time its first bailout installment arrived. But, as shown in early March in a post by yours truly at BizzyBlog (mostly mirrored at NewsBusters), GM's sales non-performance has deteriorated to the point where it has become worse than Chrysler's during the two months following the George W. Bush-decided, Barack Obama-supported bailout decision:

Disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer clearly sees the current AIG bonus controversy as an opportunity to redeem his reputation.

The Associated Press's Michael Hill provided rehabilitation assistance in his Friday report.

Spitzer is best remembered for resigning as the Empire State's chief executive after being caught patronizing high-priced prostitutes over a period of several years, and for having a reputation as an attorney general on a self-aggrandizing crusade against against corporate corruption prior to that.

Spitzer is attempting to capitalize on the public's incomplete knowledge of his sorry saga to get back in its good graces.

The AP's Hill gave Spitzer the print equivalent of a soapbox to do just that:

With AIG, Spitzer is Sheriff of Wall Street redux

Update added below.

Between the White House and the Associated Press, nobody can figure out what the President said and did. Nobody is really worried, though. Other than Fox and Friends, they're the only ones who've heard of the President's latest teleprompter gaffe.

According to the stunningly unclear AP report:

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen was just a few paragraphs into an address at a St. Patrick's Day celebration at the White House when he realized something sounded way too familiar. Turns out, he was repeating the speech President Barack Obama had just given.

Vincent Fumo's chronicle of corruption is extraordinary, even by the "standards" of Philadelphia, PA.

Thus, it's a journalistic fail that in a story about the convictions of former 30-year state senator Fumo and longtime associate Ruth Arnao, NBC Philadephia (HT Michelle Malkin) did not identify his or her Democratic Party party affiliation.

Here is a portion of NBC Philly's early-morning story:

Fumo Guilty on All Counts

Guilty is the verdict on all 137 counts for Vince Fumo in his federal corruption trail. His co-defendant Ruth Arnao is also guilty on all counts against her.

The Associated Press wire relayed a short item on Friday about how outgoing Mayor Barrie Parsons Tilghman (D-Salisbury, Md.) recently slammed bloggers as the greatest threat to her fair Eastern Shore city.

Via the Maryland Daily Record:

SALISBURY — In her final State of the City address, Salisbury Mayor Barrie Parsons Tilghman warned residents of what she sees as a great danger to the city: malicious bloggers.

Tilghman said in her address Thursday that over the last five years, the presence of a small group of suspicious, mean-spirited people focused on the negative has grown, endangering the city's vitality.

Tilghman says some people are avoiding serving their city because it's not worth chancing the scorn of bloggers. But Tilghman says they need to stand up for the city.

Tilghman's final day in office is April 19, but she says she plans to remain active in the city. She says she plans to give a less formal farewell address before leaving office.

As you can see, Tilghman's Democratic Party affiliation is curiously missing from the story, even though her party affiliation is no mystery to mainstream journalists such as Andy Green of the Baltimore Sun, who took note of her retirement in a December 15, 2008 blog post:

Los Angeles's NBC television affiliate must not have gotten the memo telling them that they should not utter the name of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), lest anyone reach the "wrong" conclusions.

NBC Los Angeles is the only media outlet I have found thus far to identify ACORN's presence in a story about a "disruptive display of disobedience" by members the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) at a school board meeting Tuesday (the story credit is to "Associated Press/NBC Los Angeles," but as you will see later, I found no AP story containing an ACORN reference).

Here is the story headline that the Google News crawler apparently originally found:

Look at how it changed.