HealthCare.gov Cost Surpasses the $2 Billion Mark; Press Mostly Yawns

September 26th, 2014 10:05 PM
It wasn't that long ago that Obamacare defenders were ridiculing those of us who pointed out that the fully loaded cost of HealthCare.gov would surely top the $1 billion mark. Well, we were wrong — to be so conservative. The real number is "about" $2.1 billion and counting, according to a Bloomberg report which is mostly being kept out of the non-business press.

AP WH Reporter Deletes Absurd Tweet Hyping Obama's Anti-ISIS Coalition

September 23rd, 2014 11:54 PM
Twitter users happening upon a Monday evening tweet by the Associated Press's Josh Lederman can be forgiven if they thought they were visiting a parody account. Lederman is a White House reporter for the AP. His LinkedIn profile indicates that his journalism career began about three years ago. His education, up to and including "a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s…

Exercise in Fantasy: AP's Ludicrous Story on Davis-Abbott Debate

September 23rd, 2014 9:18 PM
This morning (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis's awful performance in Friday's debate with Republican aspirant Greg Abbott was predictably ignored by the Politico, the New York Times, and the Associated Press's national site. The AP did have a story it apparently limited to distribution within Texas. As I also noted this morning,…
Video

NYT, Politico and AP's National Site Ignore Davis's Debate Meltdown

September 23rd, 2014 10:17 AM
The two major-party Texas gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Wendy Davis and Republican Greg Abbott, debated Friday night. I knew it didn't go well for Davis, once a national media darling, when I searched on "Wendy Davis Abbott debate" (not in quotes) and found no coverage of the event at the Associated Press's national web site, the New York Times and the Politico. Davis, trailing…

NYT, AP Ignore Socialists and Far-Leftists in NYC Climate March

September 21st, 2014 11:46 PM

At Tea Party and conservative events, the press routinely seeks out any shred of evidence of far-right extremism, racism or even uncivil behavior exhibited by attendees. If found, it then tries to portray even one or a few such people out of thousands as somehow typical. Rallies in support of liberals' pet causes get a completely different treatment. The press almost invariably ignores rampant…

Video

Will Press Notice Panetta's Contention That U.S. Left Iraq Too Early?

September 20th, 2014 10:48 PM
On Sunday, CBS's "60 Minutes" will broadcast Scott Pelley's recent interview of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. In CBS's promotional tease, which was broadcast on Friday, in response to Pelley's question about whether he was confident that the U.S. troop withdrawal "was the right thing to do" at the time it was done, Panetta said, "No, I wasn't." That's big news. How big? So big that,…

Press Ignores Errors, Inaccuracies in Burke's Plagiarized 'Jobs Plan'

September 20th, 2014 9:37 PM
The real problem with Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke's "jobs plan," the detailed version of which appears to be no longer available at her campaign's web site, isn't its plagiarized material. It's the content. The presence of certain obviously wrong facts and patently pathetic assertions indicates that Ms. Burke, a successful entrepreneur who one would think should have…

AP Tries to Make Horrid Homebuilding Numbers Palatable

September 18th, 2014 5:33 PM
The Census Bureau reported earlier today that seasonally adjusted housing starts and homebuilding permits fell by 14.4 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively, in August. The detail wasn't any better, as the two categories within each statistic — single-family and multiple-dwelling homes — also fell. You can tell that the news wasn't seen as good at the Associated Press, because Josh Boak's…

Politico Scalds DNC Boss Wasserman Schultz, Press Ignores

September 18th, 2014 2:18 PM
Though things could always change, and often do, it appears that the Democratic Party is on track to lose majority control of the U.S. Senate in the fall elections, and to make little if any kind of dent in the Republican Party's majority in the House of Representatives. Since the left never blames any of its own policies and positions for its woes, it must, Alinsky-style, find someone to…

AP Falsely Claims Reported Poverty Drop is 'First Since 2006'

September 18th, 2014 12:09 AM
As been its habit since Barack Obama took office in 2009, the Associated Press has, whenever possible, considered the impact of news developments on the President and his party as far more important than what's actually happening in the lives of real people. The latest example is the wire service's coverage of Tuesday's Census Bureau report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage in the…

Largely Ignored Yesterday, Code Pink Got Page-One Photos in 2002

September 17th, 2014 9:58 AM
Both Old Media and Old Medea were at it again yesterday. Old Medea is Medea Benjamin, the head of Code Pink, who led the disruption of a Senate hearing on ISIS and was eventually hauled away. Old Media demonstrated its double standards by giving Ms. Benjamin's temper tantrum little attention. That treatment sharply contrasts with that seen in September 2002, when, with a Republican in the White…
Video

Touré Condemns Censorship of War Photo . . . Then Censors It Himself!

September 15th, 2014 6:12 PM
Can Touré Neblett not see the incandescent irony of his statement?  His show-ending rant on The Cycle today condemned the censorship of the shocking images of war. Railed Touré: "we're blocked from seeing so much of the cost of war, of the evil of war as if we are too sensitive or squeamish or unable to handle the graphic truth." Touré focused on one particular photo, taken by photo-journalist…

HHS Still Trying to Force Contraception Mandate on Little Sisters

September 9th, 2014 11:25 PM
On August 22 — a Friday, of course — the Obama administration's Department of Health and Human Services issued a brand-new version of the Obamacare contraception mandate supposedly "accommodating" organizations with religious belief-based objections to providing such coverage. The new version is a facile variant of the subterfuge the Obama administration failed to slide by the Court in the…

10 Million Private-Sector Jobs — and 7 Million More on Food Stamps

September 9th, 2014 2:11 PM
The press is good at putting the most positive spin possible on the monthly job-market news. But at the same time, many of its members still claim that food stamp enrollment remains as high as it is because of the lingering effects of the (Bush did it) recession. On Friday, following the release of August's employment numbers, Obama administration Labor Secretary Tom Perez celebrated how "…