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“Exposing & Combating Liberal Media Bias”
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Tom RaumWe Wish: AP Report Falsely Claims National Debt Is 'Accumulation of Annual Budget Deficits'
The pair's work is partially saved here for fair use, discussion and in this case entertainment purposes. The biggest error Raum and Taylor made was publishing the following "we wish it were true" statement:
Well, Tom and Andy, using this readily available tool, if that's the case, why was the national debt on September 30, 2008 $10.02 trillion and then $11.91 trillion on September 30, 2009? That's a difference of $1.89 trillion, a whopping $470 billion more than the past year's $1.42 trillion deficit. The answer is, sadly, that the national debt is NOT the accumulation of annual budget deficits, as shown in the graphic that follows: AP's Raum Accepts, Further Distorts Deceptive CEA/Obama Small Biz Health Insurance Cost Claim
See if you think these two assertions mean the same thing:
Of course they don't mean the same thing. But to the Associated Press's Tom Raum, they apparently do. The first statement comes from the Executive Summary of a study produced by the President's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) called "The Economic Effects of Health Care Reform on Small Businesses and Their Employees" that the administration is using to promote passage of its health care plan. Based on dated information in the detailed CEA studay, the statement appears to be true, though with overly clever "up to" wording. The second statement unfortunately exemplifies how the AP's Raum wrote up the CEA result in his story. This means that his write-up has several items that are demonstrably false. Here are the story's first few paragraphs, with incorrect assertions noted in red: AP Report on WH Budget Delay Avoids Details, Buries Predix That 3Q Will Be Negative
Noel Sheppard mentioned this Associated Press story by Tom Raum yesterday at NewsBusters (Raum is tagged as the writer at this version of the report). Noel characterized Raum's report as suggesting that "the White House's delay in releasing an update about the budget might be tied to the administration's desire to get controversial bills on healthcare reform and cap and trade passed before Congress and Americans know just how large the deficit really is." That's because the delayed report would more than likely tell the nation that this year's deficit is expected to be even bigger than expected (using proper cash-flow reporting, which I'll get to), and future years' projected deficits are even more likely to be unsustainably high. Two important things were missing from Raum's report. First, there was a total dearth of detail about how badly the current fiscal year that began on October 1 of last year has gone -- most especially the last quarter. Second, Raum saved until near the end of his report a prediction by one of the wire service's go-to "experts" -- the first such prediction I've seen -- that Gross Domestic Product will contract yet again in the third quarter. AP Brands GOP Opposition as Built on 'Buzz Words'
In "GOP using buzz words to taunt Democrats," with a subhead of "Republicans claim Obama embraces 'socialism,'" Raum never once admits that Republicans just might have a principled ideological opposition to Obama's policies leaving readers to get the vague feeling that the GOP is trying just anything to find a winning issue. Further, the entire article is premised as if the Democrats are correct and the GOP is just trying to chip away at their essentially correct stand on the issues. AP even presents a lefty professor to shore up the AP point of view -- naturally the professor's propensities are not divulged. If Obama Believes Austrian Is a Language, So Will AP
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):
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. AP's Raum: Iraq War Bush 'Vendetta Against Saddam as Retribution for 9-11'
In an "analysis" piece the AP put out today, "After 4 years of errors, Bush definition of ‘victory’ in Iraq is far more modest," Raum flatly states: Bush’s decision to wage a vendetta against Saddam Hussein as retribution for the Sept. 11 attacks — six years ago Tuesday — led to many miscalculations and mistakes. And what evidence does Raum offer in support of his astonishing theory that the Iraq war was Pres. Bush's "vendetta" against Saddam "for the Sept. 11 attacks"? Uh, Tom will have to get back to us on that . . . |
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