Wire Services/Media Companies

Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press seems to be setting the table for a certain amount of failure from Barack Obama by helping lower expectations among the people. Her latest AP report is as much as warning that, since he is facing "heady challenges," we shouldn't expect too much from him. In other words, before he has even really faced anything at all, Sidoti is making excuses for him almost in…

The Associated Press is as much as blaming the victim for the attack again with theirs headlined "Obama says he wants to 'reboot' America's battered image among Muslims." In this report we get the AP saying that the reason the Muslim world is mad at us is because of George W. Bush. But not a word is mentioned about why Bush might have been in a position of interacting so heavily with the Muslim…

Evidence in abundance of AP's new "style" of news coverage. Not long ago, the Associated Press informed its writers that they should be more emotive in their writing. Instead of an old newsy just-the-facts style of reporting, then AP was looking to goose it up and add more opinion and emotion to its reporting of the "news." Well, with the story of the arrest of corruption plagued Illinois…

(Also, see Matthew Balan's NB post on CNN.com's Name That Party Blagojevich whiff, and related posts by Mark Finkelstein and Warner Todd Huston.)Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested today. The Associated Press's Mike Robinson actually identified "Blago's" party in the third paragraph of his 10:27 a.m. report (link is dynamic; cited report is also here for future reference; underlying…

Those who thought that President-elect Obama's pre-Thanksgiving promise to "create or save jobs," appropriately satirized by Mark Finkelstein at NewsBusters on November 24, might have been another one of the Oh-So-(in)Articulate One's "inartful" statements should know that it has become standard fare in Obama speeches.In related news, Uncle Sam told us Friday that over 136 million seasonally…

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…

Attention, y'all in the South: Urban crime is partly your fault.You see, if you didn't own so many guns, you wouldn't have so many of them stolen or sold at gun shows. Right now, those evil guns cross state lines and get used to commit crimes in urban areas.Got that?I know all of this because the Associated Press's Seanna Adcox, acting as a mouthpiece for the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, has told…

Updating Kerry Picket's NewsBusters post yesterday on the arrest of former (as of four days ago) Democratic California Assembly member Fabian Nuñez's son on murder charges -- Esteban Nuñez and others charged with murder pled not guilty Thursday. The party-ID treatment of Fabian Nuñez, whose term as California Assemly Speaker ended on May 13, but whose term in the Assembly ended just this past…

Apparently, if one calls an Arab-American an A** H*le, Reuters and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee want all Americans to know that this is to be considered a "violent hate crime." At least that is what it seems when looking over the very lose and sloppy definition of "violent hate crimes" in a recent story on the falling numbers of such crimes against Arab-Americans in the U.S.…

Some think that Harry Reid must live a charmed life. After all, he asserted last year that the Iraq War "is lost." Now it looks like victory, at least to seasoned on-the-ground observers like Michael Yon. He has fretted over how fossil fuels like coal make us sick. Never mind that life expectancy, largely, uh, fueled by industrialization and its accompanying higher living standards, continues to…

In her story about pardon applications submitted to the Bush Justice Department before the President leaves office, the Associated Press's Lara Jakes Jordan made it seem as if pardon applicants appealing directly to the president is a new thing, and whitewashed the last-minute flurry of pardons granted by Bill Clinton in 2001. Here are the key passages from Jordan's story: Some high-profile…

The Associated Press can't even get it right in a three-paragraph item about a White House ceremonial event.In a story Monday afternoon about President Bush's meeting with two Nobel Prize-winning scientists and Nobel Economics winner Paul Krugman, the unbylined AP writer claimed that Krugman opposed the government's financial bailout. Evidence abounds that this is not only not the case, but that…

The Associated Press is worried that Americans might accidentally imagine that the elevation of Barack Obama to the presidency could make people think that blacks in America really can get ahead. The AP is so worried that it sought out a race hustler to deny that blacks can make it here no matter what happened on November 4. As the AP reports it, apparently young Kari Fulton "cringed" when…

Governor Palin is in demand. Every newshound, every TV talking head, every newsertainer in the country is after her. She is being pursued for TV shows, book deals, movie roles, hounded by photographers and every hanger on in both Hollywood and the newsertainment industry. But the Associated Press wants to be sure you understand one thing: she is a FAILURE! That's right, in discussing Palin's…