AP Rips Hillary's E-mail Claims: 'Striking Departure From the Norm'

March 11th, 2015 12:49 PM
On Wednesday, Jack Gillum and Stephen Braun of the Associated Press fact-checked five of Hillary Clinton's claims about her e-mail scandal from her Tuesday press conference. Gillum and Braun spotlighted that Clinton is "the only secretary of state known to have conducted all official unclassified government business on a private email address," and pointed out her "striking departure from the…

AP Poorly Covers Notre Dame's 'Touchdown' Over Contraception Mandate

March 11th, 2015 11:11 AM
The University of Notre Dame won an important victory at the Supreme Court Monday morning when the Court acted in its case involving Obamacare's contraception mandate. Its "GVR" order (grant, vacate, remand) granted Notre Dame a "writ of certorari," vacated a lower court ruling against the school which would have forced it comply or face severe penalties, and remanded the case back to that lower…

Press Is Ignoring Polis's 'Tehran Tom' Tweets Against Sen. Cotton

March 10th, 2015 4:03 PM
Imagine if a Republican congressperson called Illinois' senior senator Dick Durbin "Dick Turban" in not one tweet, but two (Durbin has been given the nickname by several center-right pundits and commentators; but as far as I can tell, no national Republican politician has used it). Does anyone think it would take the establishment press over 15 hours (and counting) to report it? Late Monday…

Jackson's Endorsement of Emanuel's Opponent Not National News at AP

March 10th, 2015 2:11 PM
A review of the "Big Story" archive at the Associated Press's national site on Jesse Jackson's name returns quite a few instances where the wire service has treated the "Reverend's" self-injection into stories considered nationally important as noteworthy. In addition to the predictable plethora of stories relating to Ferguson, Missouri and "police-communities tension," Jackson's name has…

Friday's 'Strong Jobs Data Brought Down Markets' Meme Doesn't Hold Up

March 7th, 2015 8:09 AM
Stocks took a beating yesterday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 279 points. The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ each declined by over one percent. The subject line of a USA Today email I received shortly after the closing bell crystallized the establishment press "wisdom": "Dow plunges nearly 280 points as strong jobs data raises Fed rate hike fears." The problem is that even though the…

Indiana's 'Anti-Union' Right to Work Has Led to Increased Membership

March 6th, 2015 10:50 PM
One mantra that the left and most of the establishment press continually recites — and it's not surprising, given that so many people in both groups are forced to be members themselves — is that right to work laws are "anti-union." They cling to that position despite that fact that the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation accurately insists that it "is neither 'anti-union' nor 'pro-…

Corrine Brown Boycotts Bibi, Recycles 2011 Press Release to Praise Him

March 6th, 2015 6:42 PM
In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry infamously stated, in connection with an Iraq War spending resolution, that "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown of Florida has done her own John Kerry imitation. She was against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress earlier this week, and…

Spiteful: Jezebel's 'Update' to False Walker Assault Reporting Story

February 28th, 2015 7:45 PM
As noted this morning (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), Jezebel's Natasha Vargas-Cooper wrote a Friday morning hit piece directed at Scott Walker, Wisconsin's Republican Governor, calling him a "conservative werewolf" for including a provision in the Badger State's latest proposed budget to eliminate the requirement that universities report campus sexual assault statistics to the state. Vargas-…

AP Only IDs 4 of 5 Reasons Not to Worry About Downward GDP Revision

February 28th, 2015 6:26 PM
After yesterday's government report on economic growth reduced the fourth quarter's originally estimated increase in gross domestic product from an annualized 2.6 percent to 2.2 percent, you just knew that the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, would try to ride to the rescue. Late Friday afternoon, the AP's Martin Crutsinger gamely tried to concoct five reasons why we shouldn't…

Jezebel Smear: Walker Wants to Stop Campus Sexual Assault Reporting

February 28th, 2015 9:45 AM
On Friday morning at Jezebel, a Gawker-affiliated web site, Natasha Vargas-Cooper thought she had Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker by the — well, you know. In a post tellingly tagged "Conservative Werewolves," Vargas-Cooper was absolutely sure — so certain that she apparently felt no need to check any further — that Walker's proposed budget would allow its colleges to "to stop reporting sexual…

AP Report on Wisconsin Right to Work Move Presents Union Side Only

February 27th, 2015 11:28 PM
A couple of thousand protesters have showed up to rail against the Wisconsin Legislature's move to pass right to work legislation this week. That number is far smaller than what was seen four years ago, when Badger State Governor Scott Walker championed Act 10, a budget repair bill which limited — but please note, contrary to frequent press assertions, did not eliminate — most public-sector…

AP's Dilanian Fails to Report Clapper's 'Worst in 45 Years' Statement

February 26th, 2015 11:12 PM
At the Associated Press late Thursday morning, Ken Dilanian, the wire service's intelligence writer, did a marvelous job of covering up the essence of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's Worldwide Threat Assessment testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The trouble is that if he were doing his job as our Founders anticipated he would when they gave the nation's press…

AP Weakly Headlines, Poorly Covers Halbig Contingency Plan Controversy

February 26th, 2015 6:10 PM
The Associated Press's headline at Alan Fram's coverage of the controversy over the existence of an Obama administration contingency plan if it loses the Halbig v. Burwell case pending at the Supreme Court may be among the most inchoherent ever: "GOP CLAIMS PAPER SHOWS FED AIDES' PREPS FOR HEALTH LAW LOSS." "Paper"? What is in question is an alleged 100-page contingency plan should the Court…

AP Distorts Coverage of DOJ's Decision Not to Charge Zimmerman

February 25th, 2015 9:09 AM
In an almost completely expected decision, the Department of Justice yesterday announced that it "found insufficient evidence to pursue federal criminal civil rights charges against George Zimmerman for the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012." In reporting on the announcement, Jennifer Kay and Eric Tucker at the Associated Press were predictably selective in recounting the details…