Wire Services/Media Companies

In the context of his pathetic writeup on the government's disappointing report on January new-home sales, Josh Boak at the Associated Press had the nerve to claim that "demand for housing has recovered over the course of the 6 ½-year recovery from the recession." Wow. Who knew that the industry has made it all the way back to an acceptable level at long last? The obvious answer to that question…

Hillary Clinton is still sticking to her "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" strategy as the reason she won't release transcripts of her paid speeches to big banks and Wall Street firms. She can do this because outfits like the Associated Press are covering for her. The only recognition of Mrs. Clinton's problem, beyond a strategically segregated story (more on that later), is buried deep…

Yesterday morning, before the Republican Party's Nevada caucuses began, Nate Silver at the inexplicably hallowed FiveThirtyEight blog made a really naive and tone-deaf assumption. He reckoned that the caucuses would be a low turnout event, noting that in 2012, "only 1.9 percent of the voting-eligible population — about 33,000 people — participated in the Republican caucuses in Nevada," and spent…

The Associated Press clearly hopes that most Americans still pay little to no attention to New Media. That's the only credible argument one can employ as to why the wire service's Alan Fram, in his Tuesday evening dispatch, characterized the unanimous decision of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee not to hold hearings on a potential Supreme Court nominee this year as "extraordinary."…

Two important economic reports came out today at 10 a.m. One had relatively good news, while the other was a definite downer. At 2:43 p.m., the good-news item was still listed second at the Associated Press's list of Top 10 business stories, while the bad-news item was gone. That's all in a day's work of news manipulation at what should be called the Administration's Press. (UPDATE: At 9:12 p.m…

If form holds, the Democratic Party's presidential candidates in the U.S. will continue to spout various forms of socialism and class warfare as the answers to this nation's woes in hopes of buying enough "free stuff" votes to hang on to the White House. Venezuela's apparent imminent economic collapse poses a problem for this strategy. The country's problems are the direct result of 15 years of…

West Virginia became the nation's 26th state with a "right-to-work" law a bit over a week ago. At the same time, it also repealed "prevailing wage" requirements for public construction projects. The idea that the formerly Democrat-dominated Mountain State would pass either item was unthinkable as little as a decade ago. That was before the Obama administration began its war on coal-powereed…

The Associated Press has posted four stories during the past week on the machete-wielding Islamist who attacked patrons at the Nazareth Restaurant and Deli in Columbus, Ohio on February 11, seriously wounding several. The wire service's coverage has been a textbook example of deliberate reality avoidance.

New England Cable News touts itself as "the nation's largest regional news outlet" and it just may have set a record this week for most double-takes by viewers watching one of its broadcasts. Among its offerings is a weeknight program on politics called Broadside, hosted by veteran journalist Sue O'Connell, who is also co-publisher of the South End News and gay-friendly Bay Windows.   

MSNBC's Chris Hayes is usually right less often than a stopped clock, i.e., fewer than two times a day. But he might get lucky if by some miracle he's right about something else today because of the matter discussed in this post. After the Obama administration announced that President Barack Obama will not attend Saturday's funeral for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a staunch Catholic,…

Yesterday, Matt Balan at NewsBusters noted that only two of the Big 3 broadcast news networks covered "the assault allegation against former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer that emerged over the weekend," and that only NBC mentioned Spitzer's Democratic Party affiliation. A broader look at news coverage of Spitzer's latest encounter with law enforcement indicates that omitting his party…

The Associated Press's choice of a headline to accompany business writer Stan Choe's Saturday morning report on the state of the economy — "MAIN STREET HOLDS UP AS WALL STREET STRUGGLES, FOR A CHANGE" — has a couple of interesting implications. Is AP celebrating the fact that Wall Street is struggling? Or does the idea that "Main Street" is holding up "for a change" mean that it hasn't been…

On Thursday, Venezuela's Supreme Court decided to grant Bolivarian socialist "President" Nicolas Maduro what an unbylined Associated Press report described as "broad decree powers" to deal with the economic crisis and humanitarian nightmare he and his predecessor Hugo Chavez created. Maduro's government now for all practical purposes has total control of that nation's economy, which in the…