Covert Liberal Activists

Earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted the press's ridiculously forgiving coverage of today's reported increase in unemployment claims while concentrating primarily on RTT News's assertion that the unemployment rate should continue to come down as long as weekly claims stay below 400,000. Three years ago, Christopher Rugaber's threshold at the Associated Press, also known to…

Anyone who saw what the Associated Press wrote when former Bush 43 press secretary Tony Snow died in 2008 (original AP article; related NewsBusters post) knew that the wire service would do what it could to subtly distort Andrew Breitbart's considerable accomplishments in exposing leftist hatred, duplicity, and criminality. The only question was what form(s) it would take. Not surprisingly,…

As is the case with so much that is being reported in other countries about how much of the rest of the world is walking itself back from the extreme statist agenda supposedly necessitated by "climate change," a presentation at the British House of Commons made by MIT Professor Richard Lindzen, whom James Delingpole at the UK Telegraph describes as "one of the world's greatest atmospheric…

At the Associated Press on Thursday, reporter Chris Tomlinson clearly took the side of statist environmentalists in covering the Texas Supreme Court's decision recognizing the right of landowners to pump water flowing through their property underground. Tomlinson's sub-headline said that the court "approved" the idea, and his text claimed that it had "expanded property owner's rights." All…

An AP report by Rachel Zoll brought to our attention by a NewsBusters tipster headlines a truly weird assertion about GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum ("Santorum benefits from mistaken religious identity"), and submits as evidence an item in a Christian magazine which in turn has its own weird headline ("Catholic Politicians You Thought Were Evangelical"). It turns out that the…

On Thursday, over 40 hours after the Pacific Institute's Peter Gleick (pictured here) revealed that he stole documents from the Heartland Institute by posing as one of that organization's board members, Seth Borenstein at the Associated Press finally broke the ice and filed a related three-paragraph "this is boring, you don't need to read it" dispatch. Two hours later, the AP science writer…

On Monday, the editorial board at the Los Angeles Times was so mad that they fell victim to a corollary of Godwin's Law (he who mentions Hitler or the Nazis has automatically lost the argument) by the third paragraph. What has them so upset? The very idea that K-12 classroom instruction might not teach human-caused global warming and the need for massive and radical government intervention in…

While the Associated Press and the wire service's Seth Borenstein dither on what to report or whether to report anything about confessed document theft from the Heartland Institute by the Pacific Institute's Peter Gleick (a search on Gleick's last name at the AP's main national site at noon came up empty), Neela Banerjee at the Los Angeles Times incompletely reported the facts and fretted that…

The Associated Press's Seth Borenstein, his wire service, and most of the globaloney-advocating establishment press have a problem relating to development NB's Iris Somberg noted a short time ago. Peter Gleick, described in a related UK Guardian story as "a water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute," said last week that he "obtained" documents from the Heartland Institute about…

It's bad enough when items which should so obviously be leading the news aren't. It's worse when you realize that one of the reasons for the deliberate avoidance is that the press is allowing itself to be coopted into treating insignificant orchestrated political stunts to chew up scarce time and resources. Readers who are wondering why outfits like CNN (covered yesterday by Matt Hadro at…

On Monday, Calvin Woodward, with help from Martin Crutsinger and Pete Yost, produced a "Fact Check" on the budget proposal the White House released earlier that day. After properly criticizing the administration's plan to use "about $850 billion in savings from ending the wars and steers some $230 billion of that to highways" (and actually quoting someone knowledgeable, who pointed out that "…

It would appear that if Kevin Paul Dupont were king, he would be exploring how to send the Stanley Cup Finals exploits of Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas last year down the memory hole. Thomas "held the Canucks to eight goals in seven games" and became the first goalie ever to shut out his team's opponent in a deciding Game 7 on the road, helping the Bruins win their first Cup in almost 40…

Those who believe that the establishment press has gone completely to the dogs can cite support for that contention in an Associated Press story about an anti-Mitt Romney demonstration at the Westminster dog show in New York earlier today. The story is about how "a dozen demonstrators ... plus a few pooches" showed up to demonstrate against something Romney allegedly did 29 years ago. Really…

Julie Rovner, NPR's on-staff shill for ObamaCare, filed an unashamedly one-sided report on Friday's Morning Edition about the controversial Obama administration mandate that forces religious institutions to include coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations, and birth control. Rovner turned to only two individuals for her pro-mandate report: Peggy Mastroianni, general counsel at the…