Labeling

John Llloyd spotlighted how Ted Cruz has picked a fight with the media in a Thursday item for Reuters: "Most Republican contenders take a swing at the media, but Cruz swings more than others." Lloyd pointed out how after his victory in Iowa, Cruz "did not forget to say that it was the American people, not the media, who had chosen him. A supporter emphasized the point by waving a placard in front…

On Wednesday, Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press was tasked with covering ADP's morning report on January private-sector payrolls. At 8:15 a.m., the payroll and benefits giant estimated that the economy added 205,000 seasonally adjusted private-sector jobs last month. Rugaber also attended the 8:30 a.m. conference call which followed the report's release. It's clear that he was on it…

One of the economy's more important bellwethers has been on a steep year-long decline which shows no signs of abating this year. It's barely news, and much of the sparse reporting seen has been incomplete and sloppy. Truckinginfo.com reported today that "January was a tough month for truck manufacturers as Class 8 truck orders were down 35% compared to the previous month, according to a…

A great deal was made of Facebook's announcement last week that it would ban private gun sales on both its flagship website and Instagram. Readers who only followed establishment press accounts can be forgiven if they came away from most reports thinking that the firm has some kind of algorithm or recognition system for enforcing the ban. That's not so.

In the November 2000 presidential election, the Big 3 TV networks prematurely declared Democrat Al Gore the winner before the polls in those portions of the Sunshine State in the Central Time Zone had even closed. According to one post-election study, the networks' arguably politically motivated calls cost Republican George W. Bush 10,000 votes, led to the most bitter post-election battle over…

On Monday, CNN's New Day put ABC and NBC's morning newscasts to shame by actually raising the ongoing e-mail scandal during their interview of Hillary Clinton. Alisyn Camerota pointed out "the issue that has bedeviled your campaign," and noted that "your opponents have said that this is...a big deal." She asked, "How do you convince voters today not to be concerned about this?" When Mrs Clinton…

A Sunday morning report by Associated Press political writer John O'Connor acts as if the the sordid history of fiscal irresponsibility in the State of Illinois is a new development brought on by a stubborn Republican governor in just the past seven months. What hogwash. The state has had a large backlog of delinquent unpaid bills for a decade, if not longer. Five years ago, a Democratic…

In trying to explain the current situation in Venezuela, the Washington Post's Matt O'Brien, in a post at the paper's Wonkblog, also inadvertently identified two reasons why authoritarian socialist tyrants like Huge Chavez and Nicolas Maduro are able to achieve and retain power. The formula is simple: When you first gain power, garner international and media goodwill by giving stuff away, like…

Those in the press who have insisted that the "Ferguson effect" is an urban legend will have a hard time explaining why the two cities with the most potential to be affected by this supposedly mythical phenomenon now have murder rates among the top 20 in the entire world. St. Louis, Missouri, next door to Ferguson, where a leftist-"inspired" campaign of "protests," civil disorder and rioting…

Observers can be excused for thinking that the politicial establishment is preparing the battlespace to convince us plebes that progress and economic growth are overrated. (That's sort of odd for people who call themselves "progressives," but making sense is not their strong suit.) How interesting, for example, that Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon's book, The Rise and Fall of…

As has been its habit during the Obama administration when the economy turns in a poor performance, the press's coverage of yesterday's report on U.S. economic growth focused on how much better next quarter's news will supposedly be. Especially in this instance, the beat reporters and pundits should have looked at whether or not yesterday's initial result will hold up, or whether it's likely to…

Friday morning, the government reported that the economy grew at a pathetic annual rate of 0.7 percent in last year's final quarter. As it did in covering the disappointing Christmas shopping season, the business press partially blamed yesterday's awful result on the weather, i.e., warm weather.

This afternoon, Catherine Herridge at Fox News reported that "the intelligence community has deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails 'too damaging' to national security to release under any circumstances." This eighth "smoking gun" — on top of the seven an Investor's Business Daily editorial identified last week — wasn't enough to move the Associated Press Bradley Klapper from the AP's default…