Wire Services/Media Companies

Imagine if a Republican or conservative U.S. president told an audience — on foreign soil, no less — that he didn't properly warn Americans about how long it would take for the economy to recover from a recession. "So-and-so Admits He Lied About the Economy" would be headlined everywhere. At the University of the West Indies in Jamaica on Thursday, President Barack Obama essentially admitted…

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…

It took the Associated Press barely 2-1/2 hours to bury the bad news in the Census Bureau's 10 a.m. release on February wholesale sales and inventories. As of 12:32 Eastern Time, Martin Crutsinger's 10:21 a.m. time-stamped story was not present at the AP's Top 10 Business stories page (saved at my host for future reference), making it quite likely that the news won't get much prominence at the…

Newly-declared 2016 presidential candidate Rand Paul took a shot at the media during a Wednesday campaign appearance in Milford, New Hampshire. An unidentified reporter asked the Kentucky senator about a recent interview he did with the Associated Press that centered on the controversial issue of abortion. Paul replied, "Why don't we ask the DNC: Is it OK to kill a 7-pound baby in the uterus?"

The business press and the financial analysts and economists they consult continue to mostly blindly rely on the seasonally adjusted figures the government and other economic report generators hand them on a silver platter. If these de facto stenographers had dug just a little deeper a month ago, they might have avoided the serious embarassment of predicting a level of seasonally adjusted March…

New Republic staff writer Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig has clearly run out of defenses for the conduct of those involved in the disgraceful, scandalous journalistic malpractice which gave rise to the now-retracted and thoroughly discredited "A Rape on Campus: The Struggle for Justice at UVA" at Rolling Stone. So here's her last refuge: Conservatism deserves some of the blame, because Sabrina Rubin…

Chickens came home to roost yesterday at the Associated Press. The AP, the economy's most consistent cheerleader when a Democrat is in office, has not only been ignoring and downplaying the significance of disappointing and negative reports for several months, pinning its claim that all is well on the streak of seasonally adjusted 200,000-plus job gains seen during the past 12 months. It has…

A short unbylined Associated Press report at its national site on the situation at Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana this afternoon made sure to mention that the pizzeria "won't cater gay weddings" (in the headline). It also misstated the owner's statement to a South Bend TV station, claiming, using its own words, that she "said the state's new religious objections law backs their right to…

On March 18, Associated Press Religion Writer Rachel Zoll covered the decision by the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) "recognizing gay marriage as Christian in the church constitution after decades of debate over same-sex relationships." A search at the AP's national site indicates that the wire service hasn't done a story on the U.S. congregation since then. This means that it has ignored a…

UPDATE, March 31: This morning in an email, the AP's Lederman pointed me to a Saturday afternoon "Big Story" item time-stamped the day before the report to which this blog post below links. For whatever reason, that earlier "Big Story" item has more detail than what appears, despite the Sunday time stamp, to be Lederman's original report posted at the AP's national site. In that "Big Story" item…

Maybe the left needs to rethink their oft-present and deep-seated hatred of all things associated with Comcast, other cable companies, and the satellite TV providers. It turns out that those "evil" entities have done quite a bit to cushion left-leaning CNN and MSNBC from what would otherwise be a harsh financial reality. The Associated Press's David Bauder, in an item which somehow was deemed to…

The government's report on consumer spending released this morning was another disappointment. Seasonally adjusted spending increased by just 0.1 percent, falling short of modest expectations of a 0.2 percent jump, following 0.2 percent declines in both December and January. The opening paragraphs of coverage at Bloomberg News and the Associated Press contrasted sharply. Longtime readers can…

This is what happens when you have a 17-year "pause" in supposedly human-caused "global warming" and need to maintain appearances. The Associated Press's Stylebook has now given journalists who pay attention to its guidelines permission to use the term "climate change" when they would previously have felt it necessary to call it "global warming." The agenda-driving clue is seen in the wire…