NYT Outshines AP's Awful Coverage of 'Mourners' at Kim Jong Il's Funer
At the New York Times Thursday morning, reporter Choe Sang-Hun's covering the funeral for late North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il made it clear to readers that it "The funeral, and the mourning, appeared to have been meticulously choreographed by the government." Meanwhile, over at the Associated Press (saved here at host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes), a story involving…
AP's Kuhnhenn: Obama Only Promised to Make Signing Statements 'More Tr
At the Associated Press on Friday, reporter Jim Kuhnhenn provided yet another reason why characterizing the wire service as The Administration's Press is perfectly appropriate.
In wake of President Obama's use of a "signing statement" objecting on constitutional grounds to congressionally-imposed "restrictions on his ability to transfer detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo…
NY Times Buried David Barstow's Reluctant Pentagon Vindication on Chri
An April 20, 2008 New York Times story by David Barstow, “MESSAGE MACHINE: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” won a Pulitzer Prize for the explosive claim that the Pentagon had cultivated “military analysts” in a “trojan horse” campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay.
On December 1 of this year, the…
AP Report on Institute Burning in Egypt an Exercise in Reality Avoidan
A month ago, Aya Batrawy at the Associated Press's Egyptian bureau described those who ransacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo as "protesters," and absurdly asserted in the face of contrary evidence I was able to find in about five minutes that "the historic 1979 peace treaty with Israel ... has never had the support of ordinary Egyptians."
Last week, in the wake of the burning -- more like…
What Time of Year Is It? In the Press, 'Holiday Shopping Season' Still
This is the seventh year I have looked into how the media treats two Christmas-related topics: The use of “Christmas shopping season” vs. “holiday shopping season” and the relative frequency of "Christmas" and "holiday" layoff references.
Unfortunately, the hints of improvement late last year, when 20% of stories in the late December pre-Christmas search referenced the "Christmas shopping…
Unreported: Private-Sector GDP Still Smaller Than When Recession Began
Yesterday at my home blog, in the wake of Uncle Sam's reduction of third-quarter growth in gross domestic product (GDP) from an annualized 2.0% to 1.8%, I predicted that the establishment press's reaction would be the following: “Yeah, but the fourth quarter will be 3% or more. It really, really will be. Please believe us.”
Martin Crutsinger at the Associated Press made that easy prediction…
WaPo's Gowen Hits Hard at Kansas Governor Sam Brownback's First Year i
In her profile of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback on Wednesday, the Washington Post's Annie Gowen went through the predictable leftist checklist of things that should supposedly cause the rest of America not to like him. A state taken over by "tea party fervor"? Check. "Slashed" funding for "schools, social services and the arts"? Check. Imply that his predecessor, radical proabort and ObamaCare…
AP's Kravitz Heralds 'Beginning of Gradual Comeback' After One Mediocr
Lord have mercy, these people are looking anywhere and everywhere to turn an economic improvement molehill into something that sort of looks like a mountain.
Today, the headline to Derek Kravitz's report at the Associated Press ("Rise in home construction suggests a turnaround") reasonably reflected the underlying reality reported by the Census Bureau, but his first six paragraphs most…
Unreported: Red States' Outsized Contributions to Job Growth
The establishment press will never tell their readers, listeners and viewers that the five best-performing states in job growth through the first eleven months of this year, as well as nine of the top eleven, have relatively conservative Republicans occupying their respective governors' mansions. If these eleven star performers had only performed as well as the rest of the nation, over 300,000…
CBS Let 'Biggest Lie of the Year' in Politics Go Unanswered For Months
Tuesday's Early Show on CBS brought on PolitiFact's Bill Adair to reveal what he labeled as the "biggest lie of the year" inside politics, which was "the claim by many Democrats that the Republicans voted to end Medicare." But CBS let Democratic operatives spout that falsehood several times without scrutiny earlier in 2011.
The network did stand out in bringing on the PolitiFact editor,…
Unreported: Full-Time Employment Barely Up Since Recession Ended
See-no-evil economic reporting during the Obama years has "somehow" missed a number of developments in the makeup of the American workforce which I believe would not have been missed (or deliberately overlooked, take your pick) if a Republican or conservative were in the White House. One of them relates to full-time employment.
Did you know that seasonally adjusted full-time employment in…
WaPo: Give Me Your Poor, Your Tired, Your Sexually Confused
Teresa Tomassoni's piece in the Washington Post's Dec. 19 Metro section, titled "Transgender immigrant finds new life, protection in D.C.," reads like a caricature of a liberal media feel-good human interest story. The article, about a transgendered Latina illegal immigrant granted asylum in the United States for sexual persecution, is designed to tug at heart strings while at the same time…
60 Minutes Broadcast Edits Out Laughable Obama Claim as 4th Best Presi
George Washington was the father of our country.
Eh! No big deal. Barack Obama is better...at least in his own mind. Such was the laughably absurd claim of President Obama on 60 Minutes last Sunday. What? You didn't see it? That was because 60 Minutes conveniently left it out of its broadcast. If you want to see Obama engage in this latest bit of over the top braggadocio you can only see it…
Ten Months Later, AP's Scott Bauer Still Contradicting Himself, Missta
In February, yours truly sensed a misstatement of reality on the part of Associated Press reporter Scott Bauer in his description of the budget repair law the Wisconsin Legislature was then considering. At the beginning of his report, Bauer wrote that the law would "end a half-century of collectively bargaining," but later wrote that "unions could still represent workers" (That doesn't exactly…
