Reuters

It appears that someone might need to schedule an intervention with the Associated Press's economics writers. In his dispatch published a half-hour after the government's March release on international trade at 8:30 this morning, the wire service's Martin Crutsinger quoted a normally upbeat economist who was singing the blues about the result's effect on previously reported first-quarter…

Japan just reported yet another awful retail sales result. Though it far exceeeded predictions of a 7.3 percent fall, the 9.7 percent March 2015 plunge compared to March 2014 doesn't reveal much, as March 2014 saw a splurge at the stores ahead of a steep sales tax increase which took effect on April 1. The really telling figure is the 1.9 percent seasonally adjusted dive compared to February.…

A Reuters report published late Saturday evening ("Obama meets Venezuela's Maduro at time of high tensions") is astonishing for what it ignores. The unbylined report from Panama City opens by referring to how "the United States recently placed sanctions on Venezuela." Indeed, President Barack Obama did just that in an executive order on March 9, stating that he was "declaring a national…

Reuters announced its latest poll results on Monday: “Republicans see Obama as more imminent threat than Putin.” Republican views were deemed the most newsworthy ones, because they sound vaguely unpatriotic about the president. Reporter Roberta Rampton began: “A third of Republicans believe President Barack Obama poses an imminent threat to the United States, outranking concerns about Russian…

On Thursday night and Friday morning, the major broadcast networks neglected to cover a new poll from Reuters/Ipos showing support for likely Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton slipping among Democrats following the e-mail scandal as a majority of voters expressed support for an independent review of all her e-mails as well as the belief that she hasn’t entirely honest in her…

How low does left-wing hate-tank Southern Poverty Law Center have to go before the media stop sharing its “studies” as if they had objective merit?  Even though the activist group uses easily disproven, bogus stats and a “hate map” that has inspired a potential mass murder at the Family Research Council in 2012, the media continue to cite them as a legitimate and neutral source.

On Friday, the government reported that the nation's economy, as measured in its real gross domestic product, grew at an annual rate of 2.6 percent during last year's final quarter, sharply trailing analysts' consensus predictions ranging from 3.0 percent to 3.6 percent. As is the case after the first version of every GDP report, economy watchers have been trying to estimate the effect other…

None of the Big Three networks' evening newscasts on Friday covered the shooting of an American citizen in eastern Saudi Arabia earlier in the day. A Friday item by Reuters reported that "a vehicle carrying two U.S. citizens came under fire in the Eastern Province district of al-Ahsa, one of the main centers of Saudi Arabia's minority Shi'ites."

A week ago, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, a Democrat, called homelessness in his city and the rest of King County a "full-blown crisis." Based on the numbers presented in coverage of the area's situation, we can certainly add the Emerald City to the list of areas where homelessness has been on the rise. Odds are that many readers here didn't know that, because the national press hardly ever pays…

Thus far, the nation's de facto news gatekeepers at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, have utterly failed to address the growing worldwide controversy over the absence of U.S. representation above the ambassador level at Sunday's solidarity march in Paris in the wake of Wednesday's Charlie Hebdo massacre. Crowd estimates for the Paris march range from "hundreds of thousands"…

The ability of tiny numbers of far-left fringe group demonstrators to get undue press attention virtually any time they want continues to be intensely annoying. In mid-2007, Barack Obama made closing the prison at Guantanmo Bay a core promise of his 2008 campaign. That was 7-1/2 years ago. Obama has been in office six years. Gitmo is still open. So naturally, the aggrieved professional…

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “fetus” as “a human being or animal in the later stages of development before it is born.” So the Los Angeles Times (and other media outlets) are defying the dictionary with “Two fetuses found beside road in Fallbrook.” Times reporter Tony Perry dropped the F-bomb for a baby repeatedly in this short item (only the sheriff's spokesman was acknowledging birth…

The establishment press is virtually giddy over New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's cowardly, self-serving decision to ban fracking in New York. It's cowardly because Cuomo is publicly pretending that he's only deferring to his environmental and health commissioners, when everyone with an ounce of sense knows that he's getting the recommendations he wanted. It's self-serving because it enhances his…