Labeling

On Tuesday, shortly after Governor Jerry Brown signed California's $15-an-hour minimum wage legislation, the Associated Press's Michael R. Blood and Don Thompson called the move "a victory for those struggling on the margins of the economy and the politically powerful unions that pushed it." As seen in a NewsBusters post on March 31, it's definitely a win for union members whose wages are set…

Two weeks ago, yours truly posted on a very inadequate March 26 U.S.-distributed Associated Press story out of Glasgow the previous day (since expired) about the murder of Asad Shah. Despite the fact that far more information was known at the time, the wire service would only acknowledge that "the killing of a Muslim shopkeeper who wished Christians a happy Easter is being investigated as '…

On Friday's The Lead, CNN's Tom Foreman hyped how Hillary Clinton had a "bumpy ride" and a "rough start," as she "opened the door for a lot of first ladies to do a lot of different things." Foreman only vaguely referenced the Whitewater scandal and Vince Foster's suicide as he noted that her role in Bill Clinton's win in 1992 "spurred scrutiny uncommon for a president's spouse — over her ties to…

The transgender CEO of United Therapeutics said the company disapproved of North Carolina’s transgender bathroom law, which CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin described as “anti-LGBT.” Squawk Box host Sorkin asked CEO Martine Rothblatt on April 7, 2016, about the state’s new law restricting transgender access to bathrooms of their choosing. Rothblatt reported that United Therapeutics opposed the law, and…

CNN's Alisyn Camerota repeatedly touted the New York Daily News's lowbrow anti-Ted Cruz headline on Thursday's New Day. The anchor first cracked, "Look at how helpful the Daily News is being, though, for Ted Cruz. They're giving him helpful subway directions about how to get out of the Bronx. They're suggesting that he 'take the F.U. train.'" Camerota then spotlighted it in a segment about the "…

Perhaps this is why the press has been reluctant to cite economists who are predicting that sharp increases in state minimum wages like the $15-per-hour minimums just passed in California and New York will reduce employment: They're with many of their lefty brethren who don't care whether jobs are lost. So they must believe that no one else should care either. At the Washington Post's WonkBlog…

On Sunday, I noted how USA Today, the Associated Press, and the establishment press in general have swallowed the Obama administration's line that the 61 convicted and incarcerated criminals whose sentences the President commuted last Thursday were "low-level inmates" guilty of "low-level drug offenses." A spreadsheet working only from the information the White House provided demonstrates that…

On Wednesday's Legal View, CNN's Ashleigh Banfield deplored part of Mississippi's new religious liberty law. Banfield played up that "there was one other piece of language...it's odd....The law in Mississippi protects from discrimination claims from anyone who believes....that sexual relations are reserved solely for marriage." She asked legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, "Does that mean that cake-…

At Politico tonight, the headline is: "Sanders crushes Clinton in Wisconsin." Given Mrs. Clinton's frontrunner status and the fact that, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted on Saturday (HT Ann Althouse), "Wisconsin has a nearly unbroken modern-day record of voting for party front-runners in its presidential primary," that's an accurate characterization of Sanders' 12-point lead over Mrs.…

It's fair to conclude that when an article's title carries the preface "don't laugh," what follows could easily be ridiculed. Lauren R. Taylor's Tuesday online blog item for the Washington Post certainly fits that bill, as the title continued that she has "a serious reason for raising my cats gender-neutral." Taylor revealed how she once accidentally called her two female cats "boys," and used…

The Associated Press, the nation's de facto business news gatekeeper for those who don't follow the economy or the markets closely, is telling America that the U.S. job market is fine, and ignoring the dismal results seen in weekly pay during the past several months. Christopher Rugaber's Friday evening coverage of the government's jobs report earlier in the day described the reported 215,000 in…

The Washington Post's Christopher Ingraham devoted a Monday item to trumpeting the study of two Illinois political scientists, which supposedly determined that "racial prejudice could play a significant role in white Americans' opposition to gun control." Ingraham spotlighted that the professors "found that whites were significantly less likely to support gun control measures when they had…

The antennae went up when I saw the following tease on the front page of Thursday's USA Today print edition: "Obama commutes sentences for 61 low-level inmates." The brief description which immediately followed told readers that "He has cut sentences for 248 so far, more than (the) previous 6 presidents combined, official says." Hmm. What's a "low-level inmate"? The underlying Page 3A article by…