In the first major network news program since 2016 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump sparred with liberal Fusion/Univision anchor Jorge Ramos at a press conference on the subject of illegal immigration, ABC’s Nightline was there to circle the wagons for their Disney partner and “America’s best known Latino anchorman.”
Covert Liberal Activists
By Curtis Houck | August 25, 2015 | 11:44 PM EDT
In the epic multi-part battle on Tuesday night that social media and every cable news outlet were talking about, 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sparred with Fusion/Univision anchor Jorge Ramos over illegal immigration with Ramos being removed then allowed back into a press conference prior to a campaign rally in Iowa.
By Tom Blumer | August 24, 2015 | 4:01 PM EDT
You can tell that the left is getting nervous about a scandal when they invoke the successful Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth campaign of 2004 against John Kerry.
As I noted on Saturday, Maria L. La Ganga at the Los Angeles Times did that as she described Planned Parenthood's attempts to fight back against the Center For Medical Progress's exposure of their baby body parts business. On Friday at the New York Times, in a story about how Hillary Clinton was "interrupting" her Martha's Vineyard vacation, Amy Chozick found a Clinton contributor who characterized her email and private server scandal as "somewhat of a tempest in a teapot," and also described it as "their (Republicans') Swift boat issue of 2015."
By Tom Blumer | August 22, 2015 | 11:44 PM EDT
Earlier today, I noted that Los Angeles Times reporter Maria L. La Ganga compared the heroic undercover work done by investigators at the Center for Medical Progress to the 2004 efforts of the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth. She meant it as a negative, claiming that the Swift Vets' assertions about Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's service in Vietnam and his antiwar activities after he returned home are "considered by many one of the ugliest, most unfair attacks in recent political memory." She even claimed — knowingly engaging in falsehood, in my opinion — that "the Swift boat claims were later discredited." Sorry, ma'am. The Swift Vets' truths stand tall to this today.
Though the Times Seattle bureau chief doesn't reference it in her writeup, an Associated Press chart contained therein relays a falsehood Planned Parenthood routinely promotes. This one claims that "Abortion is 3 percent of Planned Parenthood Services":
By Tom Blumer | August 22, 2015 | 1:11 PM EDT
Well, this was inevitable. On the same day that the Center for Medical Progress exposed the CEO of former Planned Parenthood partner StemExpress laughing "about shipping whole baby heads," a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, in what I have beeen told is a front-page story, has compared CMP's video campaign exposing the commerce in baby body parts to the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth's campaign. The Swift Boat Vets' effort successfully exposed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's serial lies about his service in Vietnam and his smearing of Vietnam veterans as war criminals after he returned.
Times reporter Maria L. La Ganga joined the paper in 1981, and "has served as San Francisco bureau chief, edited in the Business section and pitched in on five presidential elections." Even if one of those five elections wasn't 2004, and even if she didn't dig into conflicting claims over whether Kerry truly earned the Vietnam War medals he received, it's virtually inconceivable that she doesn't know about his frequently stated "Christmas in Cambodia" lie.
By Tom Blumer | August 21, 2015 | 4:16 PM EDT
The time stamp on an Associated Press report on Hillary Clinton's email "worries" ("CLINTON FACING FRESH WORRIES IN CONGRESS OVER EMAILS") by Ken Thomas and Julie Bykowicz this morning is 11:21 a.m. Eastern Time.
Despite that time stamp, the report fails to mention a bombshell report from Reuters ("Dozens of Clinton emails were classified from the start, U.S. rules suggest") originally posted at 5:17 a.m. (time stamp has since been updated). Going even further back, the AP story fails to mention a Thursday afternoon story about how "A federal judge has ordered the State Department to cooperate with the investigation into the Hillary Clinton private email scandal." The decision to ignore these developments is in all likelihood deliberate.
By Tom Blumer | August 13, 2015 | 11:44 PM EDT
Carrying water for the left as their pet programs implode while pretending to be an objective reporter is a daunting task. The Associated Press's Stephen Ohlemacher was not up to that task Thursday afternoon. Twice, in relatively early paragraphs of his 31-paragraph writeup, the AP reporter claimed that the Social Security system has "money." He then separately quoted a Democratic congressperson who insisted that it has money, and that the mere act of correctly asserting that it doesn't "manufactures a crisis."
By Tom Blumer | August 10, 2015 | 7:01 PM EDT
The Associated Press has been in Ferguson covering the anniversary of Michael Brown's death and the George Soros-funded out-of-towners leading the "festivities."
I'll leave it to others to dissect the wire service's on-the-street reporting during the past several days. What also concerns me is how AP's reports continue to bitterly cling to half-truths and distortions about how Brown died and the nature of the evidence evaluated by the grand jury which refused to indict Police Officer Darren Wilson in his death. Five paragraphs containing such distortions were included in at least three different AP reports this weekend.
By Tom Blumer | August 8, 2015 | 12:04 AM EDT
On Friday, in his desire to help his employer outdo Politifact as the last place to go for accurate fact-checking, the Associated Press's Josh Lederman "fact-checked" Jeb Bush's belief that the U.S. economy can grow annually at an average rate of 4 percent.
As seen in my Friday NewsBusters post, when the AP reporter "fact-checked" assertions that really are facts, specifically Bush's claim that during his two terms as Florida's governor the state added 1.3 million payroll jobs (actually, it was 1.5 million according to the federal government's more comprehensive Household Survey), he brought up irrelevant points that did nothing to change the absolute truth of what Bush said. But in reviewing Bush's 4 percent potential growth assertion, Lederman wasn't even evaluating a fact; he was instead "fact checking" a goal — one which has frequently been met in the past — and acted as if its future achievement is virtually impossible.
By Jeffrey Meyer | August 2, 2015 | 1:45 PM EDT
Reacting to the news that Jon Stewart and President Obama had secret meetings at the White House, media critic David Zurawik argued that the Daily Show host has become a “tool really of the Obama administration.” During an appearance on Fox News' MediaBuzz, the Baltimore Sun columnist argued that Stewart’s meetings with Obama expose the liberal comedian’s true ideology.
By Tom Blumer | July 31, 2015 | 11:11 PM EDT
On Thursday, Curtis Houck at NewsBusters noted how the Big Three networks and the two leading Spanish-language networks ignored the latest developments in the now 813 day-old IRS targeting scandal. As usual, only Fox News covered a congressional hearing on, in Fox's words, "the lack of accountability following the IRS targeting of tea party and other groups" as well as a federal judge's threat "to hold (IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court for failing to produce status reports and Lois Lerner e-mails."
Not that this excuses the non-coverage, but if these outfits were relying as subscribers on the Associated Press to make sure that the contempt threat made by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan got the visibility it deserved so they would be aware of it and use it, the wire service's Stephen Ohlemacher let them down — and, I would argue, deliberately so.
By Tom Blumer | July 30, 2015 | 11:46 PM EDT
Ohio's newspapers have reported that two state legislators, one Democrat and one Republican, are cosponsoring a bill to defund Planned Parenthood in the Buckeye State. But they have mostly failed to note the key points made by Cleveland Democrat Bill Patmon in his inspiring, passionate speech at an Ohio Right to Life rally announcing his cosponsorship.
You see, Mr. Patmon is black, and he has had it up to here with the hypocrisy of the "Black Lives Matter" movement, especially in their failure to denounce the disproportionate slaughter in the U.S. of black babies through abortion.