Labeling

To err is human, but some errors are more obvious than others. One pretty obvious error occurred Tuesday at the Associated Press. It involved veteran economics reporter Christopher Rugaber, who somehow assumed that the August increase in home prices recorded in a well-known index published on Tuesday primarily occurred because of "solid sales." The problem is that seasonally adjusted existing…

Earlier today, Katie Yoder at NewsBusters posted and described the latest video from the Center for Medical Progress on Planned Parenthood's late-term abortion business and its related ghoulish work in harvesting fetal tissue from abortions for research. Yoder's work and that CMP video caused me to remember how the Associated Press wrote up Planned Parenthood's announcement that it would cease…

On Tuesday's New Day, CNN's Chris Cuomo bizarrely zeroed in on presidential contender Ben Carson's religious beliefs as a possible factor that could hurt his chances among the Republican base: "Is it fair criticism to look at Dr. Carson's faith being Seventh Day Adventist, in terms of how it may oppose evangelicals? There is a belief within the strictest tenets of Seventh Day Adventist belief…

If you're a few hours late catching up on reports on economic data at the Associated Press, one of the best ways to determine whether the news was good or disappointing is to see whether the story's headline and opening blurb are still present about four hours later among the wire service's "Top (usually 10) Business News" items. The good-news items will usually still be there; the disappointing…

Today saw yet another "unexpected" disappointing development in the U.S. economy. The Census Bureau reported that seasonally adjusted sales of new homes, an area thought to be a bright spot, declined sharply in September to an annual rate 468,000 from 529,000 in August. The bureau also revised July and August significantly downward. As bad as the as the adjusted numbers were, the raw data was…

In a piece that appeared in the local opinion section of Sunday’s Washington Post, writer Peter Galuszka took to bashing conservative Congressman Dave Brat (Va.) for holding beliefs that provide “eerie allusions to the nation’s xenophobic past” that Galuszka characterized as the U.S. embracing “Judeo-Christian religious tradition, rule of law and free markets.”

CNN's Jamie Gangel hounded Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio over his missed Senate votes on Monday's New Day. Gangel played up how Senator Rubio "said federal workers who don't show up should be fired." When the Florida politician countered that he had said that "federal workers that aren't doing their jobs — that are not performing at their jobs — should be able to be fired," the…

On Saturday, MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry scolded guest Alfonso Aguilar for using the term “hard worker” because it’s demeaning to slaves and working women: "I want us to be super careful when we use the language 'hard worker,' because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall, because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like."

On Monday's CNN Newsroom, Brooke Baldwin rebuked a guest who bluntly labeled Michael Brown a "thug." Former DEA agent David Katz underlined that Darren Wilson was "by all accounts, a good police officer — did exactly what an officer is supposed to do. He was set upon by a thug named Michael Brown, who just moments before, strong-armed an Indian-American half his size." Baldwin interjected, "Come…

Late Sunday evening, the United Auto Workers and General Motors reached a tentative four-year agreement shortly before the union's 11:59 p.m. strike deadline. The agreement was expected, simply because the financial and political blowback of a strike at a company bailed out by taxpayers at a cost running into tens of billion of dollars back in 2009 would have been severe. Also expected: the…

The New York Times' continuing hostility toward the GOP's conservative Freedom Caucus got snide in Sunday's news pages. "The Fights That Ryan Will Face as Speaker, In Plain English" was co-written by veteran congressional reporter Carl Hulse, who never hides his Democratic sympathies, certianly not in this snide, cynical "translation" of a Freedom Caucus-issued questionnaire, which converted…

Those folks at the Associated Press sure are "clever." Those looking for information about Hillary Clinton's damning email to her daughter Chelsea indicating that Mrs. Clinton knew that a planned operation by Al Qaeda — and not an Internet video — was behind the Benghazi attacks which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others trying to save him will find nothing at all at the AP's…

The press has consumed many barrels of ink and gigs of bandwidth providing free promotion for the eminently misnamed movie Truth, thus far virtually for naught. On Thursday, the Associated Press's David Bauder did his part to generate interest by pretending, despite obviously forged documents and a virtually complete lack of anything resembling corroborating evidence, that what Dan Rather and…

A mini-war broke out yesterday between the Washington Post's Philip Bump, who would apparently prefer to keep discussions of Hillary Clinton's health off the table, and Matt Drudge. As would be expected, Drudge won in a rout, while Bump continues to pretend that he didn't. Bump, in his disingenuous Friday morning entry at the Post's all too appropriately named "The Fix" blog, told readers that…