Associated Press

It's pretty hard to dress up a disaster as something less than that, but the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger gave it his best shot in his report yesterday about Uncle Sam's the May Monthly Treasury Statement, in effect understating the amount and significance of federal government's rapidly deteriorating financial situation.With the help of dubious handling of last year's stimulus payments…

There is happy-talk and then there is delusion. The Associated Press has just approached the delusional stage with its recent assessment of what the unemployment numbers mean. Absurdly, the AP seems to imagine that the continued job losses under Obama means that job hunters are experiencing "raising hopes"! It's like sitting on the Titanic pleased that taking on water raises hopes that a nice,…

Last night at about 8 p.m., the Associated Press's Roxana Hegeman became an early purveyor of the myth that abortion clinic-related violence and violence against abortionists has been a frequent and consistent occurrence during the past two decades when she wrote the following about the murder of Kansas abortionist George Tiller (saved here at host for future reference; bold is mine): There was…

There is little argument that the British press is doing a better job than its U.S. counterparts covering the Obama administration's less than perfect performance. If the reactions of Nile Gardiner and James Delingpole at the UK Telegraph to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs's blanket criticism of British journalism are any indication, UK reporters are also more willing to stand up for…

If you saw the headline "Muslim Charity Member Gets 65 Years In Prison," would you assume his crime was funding terrorist activities, or possibly something totally unrelated?Given that this "charity member" was convicted last November on 108 charges surrounding the transfer of more than $12 million to the terrorist group Hamas, one would think a stronger, more direct and informative headline…

Maybe it should be put to music: Blago and Burris, Sitting in a tree, But they'd rather we not know their political party. There has been yet another revelation about contacts between Democratic President Barack Obama's U.S. Senate successor, Democrat Roland Burris and former Illinois Democratic governor Rod Blagojevich over Blago's pre-Senate appointment, uh, deliberations. A released FBI audio…

Since when is the media so interested in keeping America abreast of the latest news coming out of Ireland? A commission in Ireland just released a report detailing awful abuse of children who attended Catholic schools "from the 1930's to the 1990's, when the last of the institutions closed." And what's ensued is practically an all-out media frenzy. The AP, Reuters, the New York Times, the LA…

In a classic example of a dog-bites-man non-story, the Associated Press is dutifully furthering the "censorship" whine of a rock band that laments that Wal-Mart won't stock its new album, "21st Century Breakdown."Today, Associated Press music writer Nekesa Mumbi Moody hacked out 13 paragraphs to relay how "Green Day lashes out at Wal-Mart policy." Of course the discount retailer's standards for…

As has been documented repeatedly, celebrities just don't find much material for humor with Barack Obama.  He's just so thoughtful, so articulate, so bright, so. . . Fill in the blank, as long as it's sufficiently worshipful.With former President George W. Bush, it's just the opposite.  Show biz types can't get enough of poking fun at him.  This is true even at the  National Geographic Bee.  Yes…

Here's a CNN e-mail alert I just received a couple of hours ago: So how did the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa report the above raw news? As you would expect an Obama apparatchik to do it (reproduced in full as it existed at 3:15 p.m.; bold after title is mine): Fed sees hopeful signs but downgrades '09 forecast WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve expects the economy to improve in coming…

A 60-year-old Mormon Church in Massachusetts burned to the ground on Sunday. A story about the incident appeared on the Washington Post website last night. It's an AP entry discussing the fire that chased worshippers out of the building in a panic on Sunday. But it is accompanied by a rather odd choice of images. Is it a photo of the fire-damaged church? Perhaps it is a snap of frightened…

In Part I (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) of my coverage of Martin Crutsinger's Associated Press report about Uncle Sam's Monthly Treasury Statement and the Obama administration's deficit projections, I noted that the government "miraculously" shrunk the deficit through March, the first six months of its fiscal year, by $175 billion, by employing an "accounting change." Even though this "…

You have to see this to believe it, and even then you'll have a hard time believing it. It's the Obama administration's deficit reduction program, otherwise known as "change the accounting." Here is what the Monthly Treasury Statement (MTS) from Uncle Sam looked like in March: Here is the report for April: