By Tom Blumer | December 13, 2015 | 11:24 PM EST

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Thursday that Joshua Williams "was sentenced ... to eight years in prison for starting a fire at a QuikTrip in Berkeley (a St. Louis suburb) after an officer-involved shooting there." The Dispatch apparently didn't think it important to tell readers that the crime spree which occurred after that shooting took place despite the fact that the suspect had pulled a gun on that officer.

I noted in a NewsBusters post a year ago that Williams' arrest on charges of "1st degree arson, 2nd degree burglary and misdemeanor theft," and his confession "to setting fires at the store in a videotaped interview" constituted a major establishment press embarrassment. You see, until then, outfits like the New York Times, MSNBC and others had, in the words of Ryan Lovelace at National Review, "depicted him as a hero of the summer protests" in Ferguson, Missouri.

By Curtis Houck | December 13, 2015 | 3:49 PM EST

Reporting on Sunday’s This Week about foreign reaction to Donald Trump’s candidacy and proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., ABC News chief foreign correspondent Terry Moran compared Trump to U.K. Independence Party (U.K.I.P.) leader Nigel Farage despite his firm denouncement of Trump. Moran cheered new leftist Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as providing “sharp relief” to Trump as he publicly “greeted a plane load Syrian refugees” on Friday.

By Tom Blumer | December 13, 2015 | 2:10 AM EST

Josh Lederman at the Associated Press spent the final two paragraphs of his Wednesday evening report on a meeting between President Barack Obama and Israel's President Reuven Rivlin describing "the White House's annual Hanukkah celebration." He wrote that Rivlin "lit a menorah that was made in his homeland during the 1920s."

What was said before Rivlin lit the menorah should have been news. As seen in a Wednesday afternoon White House video, Rabbi Susan Talve essentially hijacked the event to praise a series of leftist causes, touching many of the Obama administration's pet projects along the way: open-ended immigration and "refugee" acceptance; Black Lives Matter "activists"; gun control; paranoia over "Islamophobia, and homophobia and transphobia"; and "justice for Palestinians as allies committed to peace."

By Tom Blumer | December 12, 2015 | 10:47 AM EST

The callousness towards human life at Planned Parenthood is such that it believes that the remains of preborn babies killed during abortions are just like any other "medical waste," and that sending them to landfills — or, perhaps even incinerators — is therefore "humane."

That's what one must conclude from reading an Associated Press report Friday evening which strived mightily to play defense for the beleaguered group. The wire service's headline only described State Attorney General Mike DeWine as an "official." The opening sentence from Andrew Welsh-Huggins only conceded that DeWine "criticized" the practices at Ohio's Planned Parenthood's locations, when his press release clearly contends that it has been violating state regulations (bolds are mine):

By Matthew Balan | December 12, 2015 | 10:05 AM EST

On Friday, ABC and CBS's evening newscasts touted how Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "personally welcoming Syrian refugees" as they flew into Toronto. ABC's David Muir heralded, "Trudeau greeting fathers, mothers, and children — telling them — quote, 'You're home.'" CBS's Scott Pelley spotlighted the "noteworthy landing — 163 refugees escaping the war in Syria were welcomed to Canada by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau."

By Tom Blumer | December 11, 2015 | 5:37 PM EST

For a change, Martin Crutsinger's coverage at the Associated Press of the federal government's November Monthly Treasury Statement wasn't completely full of rose-colored baloney.

Crutsinger managed to note how auto-pilot entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are bankrupting the country (not in those words, of course). That said, he somehow thought that highlighting a rare and small increase in year-over-year defense spending was worthwhile, while ignoring several other larger percentage increases in other areas. Most importantly, he failed to note that the national debt has increased by far more than Uncle Sam's reported deficits. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

By Curtis Houck | December 11, 2015 | 1:32 AM EST

The December edition of the CBS News/New York Times poll came out on Thursday and, naturally, the results were covered on the CBS Evening News but, as per the liberal media’s usual pattern, it left out a slew of poll results in which voters gave President Obama poor marks on terrorism, the fight against ISIS, and how the country remains on the wrong track. Instead, CBS chose to devote all of its coverage (two and a half minutes) concerning its own poll to the results pertaining to the 2016 Republican field. 

By Curtis Houck | December 10, 2015 | 9:38 PM EST

On Thursday night, the major broadcast networks saw no point in informing their viewers of Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy’s party affiliation (Democrat) as ABC, CBS, and NBC all reported that Malloy had issued an executive order banning those on government watchlists from possessing guns in his state. Along with being arguably the strictest governor in the country when it comes to gun control, Malloy was also recently selected as the chair of the Democratic Governor’s Association (who’s term will run through the 2016 election).

By Tom Blumer | December 10, 2015 | 12:57 AM EST

For those who still believe that Black Lives Matter is legitimate grass-roots movement which came out of nowhere in response to events in Ferguson, Missouri over a year ago, consider BLM co-founder Opal Tometi.

Tometi somehow took the time and somehow found the money to get down to Venezuela, home of the latest failed attempt to impose a socialist "workers' paradise" on an unwilling population. On Sunday, despite shameless gerrymandering, significant government-imposed barriers on political speech and a virtual denial of media access, the "revolution" Hugo Chavez began in 1999 and which Nicolas Maduro continued after Chavez's death in 2013 suffered an unprecedented electoral rebuke, as the government's opposition won 112 of 167 seats in the country's legislature. Guess whose side Opal Tometi was on?

By Curtis Houck | December 9, 2015 | 11:00 PM EST

In the middle segment of Wednesday’s CBS Evening News, the newscast promoted a new Pew Research Study that illustrated the decline of the middle class in the years since the Great Recession to the point that, as anchor Scott Pelley highlighted, “[t]he middle class is no longer the majority in America.” Of course, as the liberal media naturally does, they neglected to include any placement of blame on why the erosion has taken place and placed no blame on the Obama administration and its policies (including ObamaCare).

By Curtis Houck | December 9, 2015 | 9:32 PM EST

According to a Wednesday night post on the website Long War Journal by Thomas Joscelyn, a former detainee held at Guantanamo Bay named Ibrahim Qosi has rejoined the world of Islamic terrorism and ascended to a leadership post in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) following his release in July 2012.

By Curtis Houck | December 8, 2015 | 10:16 PM EST

Acting as though the latest news the war against ISIS, new developments in the Hillary Clinton scandal or any other story barely existed, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted a whopping 24 minutes and three seconds of their Tuesday evening newscasts to obsessing over Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States. Not surprisingly, NBC Nightly News led the way by spending nearly half its newscast on Trump with five segments adding up to 12 minutes and 34 seconds.