Agence France-Presse

Move over Madonna, Miley, and Britney -- the Obamas are the hottest rock stars on the planet!So wrote wire service Agence France-Presse Sunday in a piece so filled with sugar one might require an insulin injection to survive the full reading.In an article entitled "Obamas Rock and Rule," AFP sunk to new lows in gushing and fawning over the first family:

The three largest mainstream media wire services all agreed that supporters of Pope Benedict XVI who dared to stand up to anti-Catholic leftists in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Sunday were extremists of the right of some sort. The Associated Press used the “right-wing” label to describe the faithful Catholics. Both Reuters and the French Agence France-Presse both used the term “far-…

Los Angeles's NBC television affiliate must not have gotten the memo telling them that they should not utter the name of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), lest anyone reach the "wrong" conclusions. NBC Los Angeles is the only media outlet I have found thus far to identify ACORN's presence in a story about a "disruptive display of disobedience" by members the United…

An early review of press coverage relating to this morning's warning by General Motors that "there is substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern" shows no coverage of the reason why, despite $13.4 billion in taxpayer money (NOT counting bailout money going to GMAC), things have gotten so much worse so quickly.The reason is that sales in the two full months since the Bush-…

Maybe it was just too easy to assume the worst of the news network most others in the press love to hate. Or perhaps it was deliberate.Whatever the reason, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) wire service's Wednesday story about reaction to Barack Obama's sort-of State of the Union Speech the previous evening spent four of its last five paragraphs pinning a report harshly critical of various claims in…

Nancy Pelosi had an audience with the Pope earlier today at the Vatican.Life Site News (HT Gateway Pundit via Michelle Malkin) covered what the Vatican had to say about that meeting:Pope Rebukes Pelosi, Tells Her Catholic Legislators Obligated to Protect LifeThe Vatican Press Office released a note this morning detailing part of the conversation which Pope Benedict XVI had with Nancy Pelosi, the…

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at a press conference in support of the Democrats' stimulus proposal, January 28, 2009.   Photo AFP/Getty/Mark Wilson

Jan. 14 Update: "AP's Early-AM Revision Flushes Many Details, Calls His Tax Problems 'Goofs'" Timothy Geithner, pictured at right in an AP photo, is Barack Obama's nominee for Treasury Secretary. Mr. Geithner will, among many other duties, oversee the Internal Revenue Service.How odd, to say the least, that Mr. Geithner has had persistent tax filing and payment problems going back over 15 years…

Why can't everyone just settle down, get out of the way, get rid of the "distractions," and let Barack Obama do his magic? That seems to be a recurring media meme during this presidential transition period.Here are just a few examples in just the past 30 days: In a December 12 "analysis" piece at Reuters, Steve Holland opened by telling readers that "A political scandal that led to the arrest of…

Apparently, for Agence France-Presse, desperate Cubans who flee the Castro brothers’ island prison don’t escape or defect, they merely “depart.”    It wasn’t merely a poorly-chosen headline stating, “Two top players depart Cuba in a bid to play in US." The whitewash was mirrored in the December 29 article, and the bias wasn’t confined to careful language manipulation.  AFP also minimized the…

No, it's a not a story from the Onion. It's AFP reporting on the actions of Associated Press photographers and journalists:US news agency staff stage 'byline strike' Journalists and photographers at the US news agency the Associated Press (AP) are withholding their bylines to protest management's stance in contract talks, their union said. "Staffers recognize the tough times, but they also…

I suppose the Associated Press wants us all to feel sorry for Mexico. With so many illegals here either having trouble finding work or actually returning home, Mexico is finding that its citizens illegally in the US have fewer American dollars to send home. AP says the "situation is so serious" that the Mexican government is trying to create new programs to reinforce ties between illegals here…

Yahoo News featured an interesting short report issued by Agence France-Presse on November 20. In it we discover that a consortium of French, German and Hungarian mathematicians are claiming to have proven that Einstein's famous equation, e=mc2, is correct. The report is all good except for one very small aspect. They call the effort of these mathematicians "heroic" in contradiction to the root…

**Update**I've Been Scolded... It’s always nice to see someone thank another for their hard work, isn’t it? Well, here at the end of this long, long presidential campaign (it’s been going on since 2004 for Barack and the Old Media, after all), Barack Obama has thanked his fellow campaign members in the Old Media for their hard work as they’ve fronted for him, pushed for him, and willingly dived…