Associated Press

AP Report on Latest Hostess Asset Sale Tags the Wrong Union With Blame
March 22nd, 2013 11:33 PM
I don't know whether AP Food Industry Writer Candice Choi misidentified the union responsible for the final demise of Hostess late last year deliberately or out of ignorance.
But in the final five paragraphs of her report on the company's sale of several of its best-known brands to two investment groups, Choi definitely blew it (bolds are mine throughout this post):

AP: ‘Abortions Are Typically Performed In Utero
March 21st, 2013 1:52 PM
As both Matthew Balan and Mark Steyn have noted, the mainstream media has for the most part gone missing in reporting the murder trial of late-term Pennsylvania abortionist Kermit Gosnell.
Gosnell, his wife Pearl, and eight employees stand accused of murdering seven newborn abortion survivors and one mother. Not only has MSM gone missing, when it does report on this horrendous story, it often…
Much of the Press Calls Now-Nixed Partial Account Seizure in Cyprus a
March 20th, 2013 10:29 AM
Much of the press is describing the EU's demand that Cyprus seize a portion of bank account holders' deposits, a demand rejected yesterday by the island nation's legislature, as a "tax."
I think it's reasonable to suggest that this characterization is designed to minimize the frightening authoritarianism the EU has just attempted. In a bit of a pleasant surprise, one organization openly…

Pew 'State of the Media' Study Bemoans Weakening 'Filter,' 'Shrinking
March 18th, 2013 8:45 AM
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its 2013 pity party -- er, annual report -- on the State of the News Media (home page; full overview).
Two things struck me in my initial scan-through: First, the whining about newsroom cutbacks, which are largely related to pervasive bias and misplaced priorities; second, the characterization of newsmakers' improved…

Wires Downplay or Fail to Mention Feb. Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date
March 17th, 2013 1:29 PM
There's a reason why Media Research Center sister site CNS News had to put out a story about how much the government has spent so far this year -- $1.505 tillion -- after Wednesday's release of the February Monthly Treasury Statement: Two of the three major wire services failed to report that obviously important number, and the third saved it for their writeup's final sentence.
What follows…

Govt.'s Feb. Treasury Statement Shows That Economy Is Not Better Than
March 16th, 2013 9:10 PM
The official Monthly Treasury Statement for February came out Wednesday showing a deficit for the month of $204 billion, basically the same as the Congressional Budget Office predicted several days earlier. The reported deficit through five months of the fiscal year is $494 billion, down from $580 billion a year earlier.
That February result was an "improvement" of $28 billion over the $232…

AP Calls Out Pols and Others For Using Gun Stat Which Has Never Been T
March 16th, 2013 10:04 AM
We should give credit to the Associated Press's Calvin Woodward, with help from AP Polling Director Jennifer Agiesta and writer Alan Fram, for calling out politicians and other gun-grabbers who have been abusing a two decades-old gun-related statistic and passing it off as if it's still factual.
That's nice, but Woodward could have saved many words, mountains of paper, and tons of bandwidth…

As Last Opposition TV Station in Venezuela Is Acquired Under Duress, A
March 13th, 2013 9:17 AM
In a mild shock -- mild because it's mentioned before the elections, but probably won't be when it really matters after the polls close -- Frank Bajak and Jorge Rueda at the Associated Press, in a story about how the last opposition TV station in Venezuela is being sold to an insurance magnate who is reportedly "friendly with government," noted the extraordinary handicaps that Venezuela's…

AP’s Crutsinger: Employers Are on a ‘Hiring Spree,’ and Job Mark
March 10th, 2013 3:06 PM
At the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, Martin Crutsinger's treatment of the February employment report released on Friday was pretty much the slavering soliloquy one would have expected.
Crutsinger described the past four months as a "hiring spree," and the job market as "accelerating." Even sticking with the seasonally adjusted figures, that doesn't stand up well, given…

AP: Chavez Procession an 'Epic Farewell to a Larger-than-life Leader
March 6th, 2013 9:19 PM
It's as if Associated Press reporter Paul Haven saw colleague Frank Bajak's pathetic obituary of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez earlier today (covered by Matthew Balan at NewsBusters) and said: "Oh yeah? I can outdo you."
That he did, in an execrable report excerpted after the jump which should be saved to the hard drive and shown as evidence that anyone who calls the wire service "the…

WaPo Fact-Checker Twice Calls Out Obama Over Non-existent Sequester-Re
March 6th, 2013 4:07 PM
President Obama's sequester-related press briefing on March 1 contained the usual fibs. Examples include but are certainly not limited to the following: "We've already cut $2.5 trillion in our deficit," when the entire amount involved is something which might happen in the future; his claim that his State of the Union laundry list "is the agenda that the American people voted for," when many of…

AP Sanitizes Joseph Kennedy II's Quote on Chavez's Death, Avoids Notin
March 6th, 2013 11:25 AM
CNN, which if I recall correctly severed formal ties with the Associated Press some time ago, quoted former congressman Joseph Kennedy II's reaction to the death of Venezuela's authoritarian leader Hugo Chavez as follows: "President Chavez cared deeply about the poor of Venezuela and other nations around the world and their abject lack of even basic necessities, while some of the wealthiest…
AP Pays Tribute to 'Master Communicator' and 'Fine Baseball Player' Hu
March 5th, 2013 6:41 PM
Frank Bajak of the AP lionized Venezuelan autocrat and "fighter" Hugo Chavez minutes after his death on Tuesday, playing up in the second sentence of his item how the "former paratroop commander and fiery populist...outsmarted his rivals time and again." Bajak later hyped Chavez as a "master communicator and savvy political strategist."

AP Writers' Headline and Intro Nearly Go Into Euphoria Over Nominal Ye
March 4th, 2013 11:55 PM
Readers here can attempt to fill in the blank, and will get to the the correct answer after the jump.
In their coverage of U.S. vehicle sales in February, Tom Krisher and Dee-Ann Durbin at the Associated press, aka the Administration's Press, wrote the following in an item headlied "US AUTO SALES POWER AHEAD IN FEBRUARY": "Americans want new cars and trucks, and they're not letting higher gas…