Wire Services/Media Companies

On Wednesday, Amber Phillips at the Washington Post's The Fix blog impressively took President Obama to task for his over-the-top bragging about the nation's mediocre (and likely getting worse) economy. She noted that "the biggest knock on the Obama economy ... is that the recovery has been very good for the wealthy and certain sectors and not so much for the middle class and everyone else." Hear…

During the middle years of last decade, the business press, including the Associated Press, worked the word "recession" into its reports on the economy quite regularly. Yesterday, despite a current economy facing far worse fundamentals than were seen during 2007, the AP's Paul Wiseman and Bernard Condon gave us a nearly 882-word treatise on "WHY GLOBAL WOES AND SINKING STOCKS DON'T MEAN US…

The Associated Press's coverage of Friday's deep U.S. stock market dive in two Friday afternoon reports engaged in the reality avoidance longtime readers here have come to expect. An item by Stan Choe ("Get used to it: Big drops for stocks are back again") spent most of its verbiage on "volatility," and only cited "China's sharp economic slowdown ... Tensions in the Middle East ... the plunge in…

The press's determination to protect liberal politicians against their own mistakes by minimizing their significance or failing to report them at all extends far to the left — as far left as Vermont Senator, self-described socialist and Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Excerpts from Ars Technica's report on Team Sanders' attempt to prevent Wikipedia from using the campaign…

The Brookings Institution, the leftist think tank, is wailing and gnashing its teeth over its finding that in many metro areas, "income inequality," their favorite bogeyman, is being "driven by declining incomes" among their poorest residents. The problem isn't so much that the rich are getting richer as it is that the poor are getting poorer. As a result, "Inequality is higher today in most…

It would appear that Yuri Kageyama at the Associated Press has fallen into the trap of believing the rubbish her employer and much of the rest of the world's press has been pushing about how the world's economies really aren't performing all that poorly, that this "new normal" world isn't all that bad, and what we are seeing is all we have a right to expect. You see, Kageyama doesn't understand…

Despite reports and statements containing the term coming out of Germany during the past week, searches at the Associated Press on "no-go zones," and even on "no-go," return nothing. The New York Times has no recent report identifying European no-go zones, but has at least demonstrated that it might be getting over its nearly allergic reaction to the term by observing that parts of Ramadi, Iraq…

At the Associated Press, as seen at its "Top Business News" page Friday afternoon, Christopher Rugaber opened his song of praise for yesterday's jobs report ("US EMPLOYERS HIRE AT ROBUST PACE, DEFYING GLOBAL TRENDS") as follows: "American employers added a robust 292,000 jobs in December, suggesting that the U.S. economy is so far defying global weakness and growing solidly. ..." Rugaber's…

Yesterday at NewsBusters, Ken Shepherd noted how quickly and gleefully the New York Times jumped ("an impressive sprint capping off a year of solid job growth") on December's relatively strong jobs report. The Associated Press joined the parade — "US EMPLOYERS HIRE AT BLISTERING PACE, DEFYING GLOBAL TRENDS" – and kept its story as its lead in its Business "Top Stories" until late afternoon.…

Today was a fairly brisk day for economic data, as four noteworthy reports were released. One of them contained good news, but with a heavy asterisk. The other three were either not good, period, or came in below expectations. Readers here probably know which one the Associated Press was still carrying at its Top Business Stories page as of 2:39 p.m. Of course, it was the one with good news.

The liberal media, especially the Big Three networks, have been so caught up in President Obama's "deeply emotional appeal," as he issued his executive orders on gun contro,l that they haven't bothered to check the effectivity of the actions. On Wednesday, the AP's Michael R. Sisak pointed out that "the gun control measures a tearful President Barack Obama announced Tuesday would not have…

At the Associated Press, Wisconsin-based reporter Scott Bauer, who has spent the better part of the past five years describing Badger State Governor Scott Walker as "polarizing," has been given the opportunity to get involved with 2016 presidential campaign coverage. Leftists and Democrats rarely earn negative descriptors in Bauer's reports, while Republicans and conservatives receive them…

Media bias is hydra-headed in its perniciousness.  It operates on many levels - in many ways.  One of its practitioners’ favorite moves is the terrible headline.  In which they knowingly - or unknowingly - tip their hand on the story at hand.  These heinous headlines can effectively work to sway casual, drive-by media consumers - who don’t go deep into multiple articles to get a more fully-formed…

A time-honored tactic in political TV ads is to use contrasting degrees of photographic exposure, one bright and snappy for your candidate and a darker hue, sometimes even going to old-fashioned black-and-white, for your opponent. On December 29, at the Washington Post's Wonkblog, Max Ehrenfreund cited a conveniently timed "study" which looked at 2008 ads produced by and on behalf of GOP…