Jennifer Loven

Jennifer Loven, an 18-year AP veteran and the wire service's chief White House correspondent, has decided to put her communications talents to work for The Glover Park Group, a DC-based “strategic communications firm” founded in 2001 by a bunch of Clinton and Gore staffers, most prominently Joe Lockhart, who found themselves unemployed after the 2000 election. She'll be “Managing Director in its Public Affairs practice,” a Thursday press release from the Glover Park Group, plugged by Politico's Mike Allen, announced.

She's the second President in a row of the White House Correspondents' Association to leave journalism for a left-wing, or at least left-leaning, lobbying outfit. In June, Bloomberg's White House reporter, Ed Chen, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, jumped to the Natural Resources Defense Council as Federal Communications Director. (My complete Obama-journalism revolving door list.) Loven held the WHCA position for 2008-2009 and was succeeded by Chen.

Amongst the clients touted on the Glover Park Group's Web site: American Civil Liberties Union, Alliance for Climate Protection, Campaign for Women's Lives, Better World Campaign and the Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty. They also list some corporate clients, but no conservative activist groups.

The establishment press dispatches from Copenhagen have been remarkable exercises in unreality.

That's because, as documented in two columns this week at Pajamas Media by Joseph D'Aleo (here and here), the ClimateGate scandal's scope has gone worldwide. The sub-headline at D'Aleo's first column succinctly states the following (bold is mine):

The focus belongs not just on CRU (the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit), but on all of the organizations which gather temperature data. All now show evidence of fraud.

That's right, "all." As in, "every." As in, "no exceptions." There is apparently no clean data anywhere. And the raw data? As noted some time ago (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), that's gone too.

Thus, there is no credible, scientific support for the assertion that the earth has been unusually warming, or for the contention that such warming if even occurring is human caused. None.

The word choices of Jennifer Loven at the Associated Press in her latest reports seem to betray a bit of anxiety that globaloney's house of cards is quickly collapsing. 

On the syndicated "The Chris Matthews Show," over the weekend, Chris Matthews and his panel linked Rush Limbaugh and the GOP to the birthers movement and accused them of playing racial politics. After showing clips of Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin, Matthews and his panel argued that the GOP and conservatives were trying to capitalize on a "dark undercurrent" in America, as Matthews charged: "Are, are the Republicans using this to sort of build the undercurrent of passion against this president? They may not admit it, but are they using it?" 

NBC's Norah O'Donnell responded, "Yes I think I do. There is a sense that there are forces out there that are doing harm to this country and so people are looking for a way to de-legitimize Barack Obama. And so whether they can do it by aligning his race or his birth, even though he was born in America, they are a way to de-legitimize him and I think it, it's this dark undercurrent in America. And the thing that concerns me is that rather than focusing on things that unite us, that people are concentrating on things that divide us." [audio available here]

For his part Newsweek's Howard Fineman accused the GOP of using the "anger" to win in 2010. 

It must be hard to keep a straight face when you report that the President of United States going to cut $100 million from a $3.5 trillion budget and then say he is serious about cutting government spending.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs couldn't pull it off. In the White House's April 20 press briefing, Gibbs was asked by Associated Press reporter Jennifer Loven why the $100-million target was so small and she even accused him of making a joke about it.

"I'm being completely sincere that only in Washington, D.C. is $100 million not a lot of money," Gibbs said. "It is where I'm from.  It is where I grew up.  And I think it is for hundreds of millions of Americans."

But somehow, CNN correspondent Elaine Quijano pulled it off. Originally on CNN's April 20 "American Morning," and again on CNN throughout April 20, Quijano reported the Obama administration was making an effort to cut spending.

Who knew that the Associated Press's Jennifer Loven has the ability to see into the future?

That must be the case, because yesterday she told us what had happened at Barack Obama's sort-of State of the Union speech -- 5-1/2 hours before Obama uttered a word.

As fellow NewsBuster Noel Sheppard is given to say, "I kid you not."

Loven's AP story carried at Breitbart (HT to Abe Greenwald a Commentary's Contentions blog via Instapundit) has a 3:30 p.m. Eastern time stamp:

Obama's speech was scheduled to begin at 9:00 p.m.

Loven's before-the-speech as if after-the-fact review provides plenty of comic relief. Though she would be expected to have been given a pre-release copy of the speech, her use of the past tense gives readers the impression that the speech had already taken place. She even criticized Republicans for allegedly doing exactly what she was doing -- but they weren't (bolds are mine):

The Associated Press's Jennifer Loven is now the President of the White House Correspondents Association (picture at right is from the WHCA web site).

Loven was the first person on President Obama's preselected list of those permitted to ask a question at his February prime-time press briefing. Whether she received this top placement because of her office, or because of her years of George Bush-bashing bias -- so strong and obvious that Powerline was moved to dub her a "Democratic Operative" back in 2004 -- is an open question.

Loven queried the president as follows:

Earlier today in Indiana you said something striking. You said that this nation could end up in a crisis, without action, that we would be unable to reverse. Can you talk about what you know or what you’re hearing that would lead you to say that our recession might be permanent when others in our history have not? And do you think that you risk losing some credibility or even talking down the economy by using dire language like that?

(Obama actually said "may be unable to reverse," not "would be." But I digress.)

Obama's rambling answer, and the rest of the briefing, should have reminded Loven of what she surely considered a withering critique of Bush three years ago (HT to an e-mailer; bolds are mine). After all, she wrote it:

Waiting for the press conference to start. I may also tweet some over at Twitter.

I'll be particularly looking for any questions on Wall Street's reaction to Geithner's plan (382-point drop, market stagnant today) and how Gibbs would respond to it. Should be fun.

I'm watching via Fox News.

14:15: We're 15 minutes late. Par for the course with Gibbs.

14:16: Chris Cillizza of Washington Post tweeting @TheHyperFix: Is this like a concert? If we all start clapping, will Gibbs come out?

14:18, Fox was at commercial break when Gibbs came out, switched to CNN. Sneaky, Mr. Gibbs.

14:19, Jennifer Loven of AP asking if Geithner didn't realize how bad the market reaction would be yesterday

Gibbs says the plan wasn't designed for one-day market reax.

Update: The highlight thus far is the testy exchange between Gibbs and Tapper. Checking the tape again it appears he did answer Tapper's second question, albeit tersely muttering the response, before turning to Chuck Todd of NBC.

Gibbs starting press conference about 10 minutes late, at 2:10. Says was late getting started due to news about Associate Justice Ginsburg's pancreatic cancer surgery.

[N.B.: I'm watching via Fox News ]

14:10, Jennifer Loven, AP: question about stimulus size.

14:13, Loven question about potential conflict of interest for Obama's Labor Sec. designee, Rep. Solis.

14:14, female reporter notes more "combative" tone to Obama's talk on stimulus, asks if he's "given up on bipartisanship"

sorry for the gap, had Internet connection problems for a few minutes.

14:19, Ed Henry: President talked about the trillion dollar deficit, why then if that's a failure does he want to add $8 or $9 billion on top of that?

14:20, Henry: Paid for with a cigarette tax but we're not sure how many are going to buy cigarettes

14:22,Henry: Notes Labor Secretary-designate Hilda Solis's husband's reported tax liens, asks if White House knew about it.

14:24, Jake Tapper, ABC News: Can we get copy of the waivers for former lobbyists given by the OMB. It's not available by email or the Web, can we get them. 

Opposition to excessive debt as "analyzed" by the AP:

Analysis: GOP gambles in opposing Obama stimulus By CHARLES BABINGTON and LIZ SIDOTI AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.

At least two of these folks come with a history. Charles Babington, when at the Washington Post, and Jennifer Loven, in her current position as Democratic flack for the AP, each have a history of writing briefs for the current Democratic position disguised as news reporting or analysis, with Loven having trouble interpreting polls correctly.

WASHINGTON (AP) Eight days after Barack Obama took office as a "change" president, House Republicans have made a huge political gamble that could set the tone for the next election cycle. In unanimously opposing the massive spending bill that Obama says is crucial to reviving the economy, they signaled they are not cowed by his November win or his calls for a new era of bipartisanship.

The fallout that began a week ago after the publication of the Associated Press's Tony Snow obituary continues.

Fox News's Bill O'Reilly took his concerns about it to the top of AP, and didn't like the response he received. He shouldn't.

In his column this morning at Townhall.com, he also reaches a conclusion about the self-described "Essential Global News Network" that is becoming increasingly difficult to deny.

After the firestorm that erupted Saturday over the Associated Press's classless story on the death of former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, I was hoping that the possibly-chastened wire service could get through its coverage of his funeral without getting in any gratuitous digs.

In that horrid Saturday story (blogged at NewsBusters and BizzyBlog), the AP's Douglass K. Daniel, with the assistance of longtime Bush basher Jennifer Loven, felt it necessary, within hours of Snow's passing, to characterize him as "not always (having) a command of the facts," questioning reporters' motives "as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing," and turning his briefings into "personality-driven media event(s) short on facts and long on confrontation." In a further descent into tastelessness, they felt it necessary to tell us what Snow's salary at the White House was -- something I don't believe I have ever seen written in a story on anyone else's death. (11:00 a.m. update: See this comment below for an exception.)

Covering Snow's funeral Thursday, AP reporter Ben Feller stayed classy almost to the end. But then he apparently couldn't help himself, and followed the execrable example of his Saturday predecessors in his story's third-last paragraph.

At long last, has the Associated Press lost all sense of decency?

The AP's story (saved here for future reference in case the wire service is embarrassed into revising it; you might consider saving it too as Exhibit A on how far over the cliff the dinosaur media has driven itself) by Douglass K. Daniel, with Jennifer Loven contributing (I might have known), gets in at least three cheap, fundamentally untrue, and totally uncalled-for shots at Tony Snow, who died earlier this morning.

I won't sully NB's front page with any of them. They follow the jump:

On Friday, NewsBusters asked, "Will Anti-war Media Turn On Obama If He Flip-flops On Iraq?"

A few hours later, we got our first response from Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press.

In a piece entitled "Analysis: Obama's Shifts to Center Give GOP Ammo," although Loven did her best to blame the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee's flip-flop problems on "the Republican weapon of choice," she made it very clear that a change in position on Iraq -- whether real or imagined -- could be fatal for the junior senator from Illinois (emphasis added throughout):

President Bush is holding a press conference on the U.S. economy. I'll be blogging the questions to the president below.

Video of Bush/Raddatz clash here (audio available here).

Video of Stolberg and Ryan on recession here (audio here)

My bottom line analysis (11:25): The two R's of bias from this Rose Garden presser: Martha Raddatz on Syria and numerous reporters on the dreaded R-word, recession. Of course a recession is two consecutive quarters of NEGATIVE economic growth, and we've yet to see one quarter of negative growth, much less two. But all the same, NY Times's Stolberg made it sound like Q1 numbers on GDP tomorrow will show a recession.

The questions below will be posted in reverse chronological order:

Update appended at bottom of post (Oct. 5)

A day after slamming the president with a biased report on SCHIP, AP White House reporter Jennifer Loven worked her "Bush is a failure" meme into an "analysis" piece that chalked up every real or perceived failure of the Bush administration to the President and his team, and none to the persistent opposition of liberal critics in Congress:

WASHINGTON -- Over and over, President Bush confidently promised to "solve problems, not pass them on to future presidents and future generations." As the clock runs out on his eight-year presidency, a tall stack of troubles remain and Bush's words ring hollow.

Iraq, budget deficits, the looming insolvency of Social Security and Medicare, high health and energy costs, a national immigration mess - the next president will inherit these problems in January 2009. With Bush's popularity at an all time low and relations with the Democratic-led Congress acrimonious, he has little or no chance of pulling off a surprise victory in his time left.

Associated Press reporter Jennifer Loven practically blew kisses to the Left with her biased coverage of President Bush's veto of the Democratic proposal to boost SCHIP by a whopping $35 billion over five years.:

WASHINGTON -- President Bush, in a sharp confrontation with Congress, on Wednesday vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have dramatically expanded children's health insurance.

It was only the fourth veto of Bush's presidency, and one that some Republicans feared could carry steep risks for their party in next year's elections. The Senate approved the bill with enough votes to override the veto, but the margin in the House fell short of the required number.

Ah yes, the old paint-the-conservatives-as-the-bad-guy trick. Bush's veto is [cue ominous music] a "sharp confrontation" that prevents kids from getting health care and is sure to doom the GOP to wander the electoral desert.

Those are all nice partisan talking points, but you'll notice no quote marks. It's all Loven's spin.