By Matthew Balan | December 1, 2015 | 1:18 PM EST

On Monday's AC360, CNN's Randi Kaye played up how the hidden camera videos from the Center for Medical Progress triggered "anger-filled rhetoric" from the Republican presidential candidates in the months before the Colorado shootings. Kaye touted that CMP's David Daleiden "told CNN that...he did get creative with the video — admitting that it was edited — a critical detail that seemed to be lost on all the GOP candidates." This, of course, ignores the hours of footage that does show Planned Parenthood officials "bargaining, negotiating, pricing, and arranging the sales of body parts," according to her network's own reporting.

By Tom Blumer | November 30, 2015 | 7:46 PM EST

From time to time over the past nine years, I have written about "globaloney," a shorthand term for the pseudo-science behind “climate change,” and “globalarmism” to describe the enviro-hysteria over "global warming" and the misguided public-policy prescriptions arising from that hysteria. Since the Paris climate talks have just begun, the press hysteria has reached a fever pitch.

At the Associated Press on Sunday, Seth Borenstein, swept up in that hysteria, wrote up a perfect example of "news" coverage embodying the essence of each term. We should be forever grateful that longtime skeptic Christopher Monckton, at the Watts Up With That blog, picked Borenstein apart, utterly destroying the AP reporter's work, piece by piece.

By Tom Blumer | November 30, 2015 | 12:23 PM EST

In predictably disingenuous fashion, the Associated Press claimed in a November 18 story that "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has shined new light on the breakdown of a potentially history-altering round of 2008 peace talks." Abbas acknowledged that Israel offered Palestinians 93.5 percent of the West Bank and other significant concessions.

The "light" isn't "new" at all. The wire service had the news almost seven years ago, and, according to former AP reporters, refused to publish it. An AP reporter who "discovered the Israeli peace offer in early 2009, got it confirmed on the record and brought it" to the AP in Jerusalem has substantiated the assertion that it "suppressed a world-changing story for no acceptable reason." It is perhaps the most damming validation yet that prudent people should never trust establishment press reports out of the Middle East — particularly in regards to Israel — because of their "pattern ... of accepting the Palestinian narrative as truth and branding the Israelis as oppressors."

By Matthew Balan | November 30, 2015 | 11:40 AM EST

Eric Bradner touted in a Sunday article on CNN.com that the "Republican presidential contenders condemned" the man who murdered three people at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado, but "largely stood by their fierce criticism of the organization." Bradner played up that "Ben Carson...was the only Republican candidate to call on anti-abortion activists to alter their approach" in the wake of the deadly shooting.

By Tom Blumer | November 29, 2015 | 10:03 PM EST

As yours truly noted in several posts at my home blog on Wednesday and at NewsBusters on Friday and Saturday, the torrent of pre-Thanksgiving "getaway day" economic data was largely disappointing.

That didn't stop the Associated Press's Chris Rugaber from pushing the "All is well" meme late Wednesday afternoon, declaring, contrary to what anyone's eyes could see, that "the fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain solid," that "Consumers appear relatively confident in the economy," and that "Americans are unleashing pent-up demand for big-ticket items such as homes and cars."

By Tom Blumer | November 28, 2015 | 6:46 PM EST

The truth about this year's Thanksgiving and Black Friday store and online sales is out there. It's just that Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, wasn't interested in clearly revealing all of it.

Instead, the AP economics writer told readers about the dollar amount of this year's and last year's Thursday and Friday store sales, but failed to quantify the increase in online sales. People who don't follow the economy closely likely don't know that an increase in online sales is quite unlikely to offset a decrease in brick-and-mortar store sales. The way Rugaber wrote up his piece ensured that news of the economy's continued malaise will remain elusive for low-information news consumers and, ultimately, low-information voters.

By Clay Waters | November 28, 2015 | 2:41 PM EST

Colorful New York Times political reporter Jason Horowitz let his left-wing ideological flags fly with three stories on consecutive days --a "venemous" Donld Trump rally, a cyptically hostile Carly Fiorina profile, and a chiding of Bernie Sanders for being insufficiently fiery on gay rights in the 1990s. Horowitz held Fiorina's childhood continent-hopping against her candidacy: "That family pedigree and worldly past is politically inconvenient in a campaign climate that prizes anti-establishment outsiders and a strong dose of nativism."

By Tom Blumer | November 28, 2015 | 10:16 AM EST

On Wednesday, the Associated Press's Josh Boak added to the wire service's collection of weak "Getaway Day" business journalism by declaring that new-home sales "recovered in October."

No they didn't. The seasonally adjusted annual rate of 495,000 units reported by the Census Bureau was the fourth-lowest monthly level seen this year, even well below the 521,000 and 545,000 reported in the supposedly unprecedentedly awful winter months of January and February, respectively. Boak also claimed that "Americans recovered much of their appetite for owning new homes this year," even though current levels are at best about 70 percent of what one would expect in a pre-"new normal" healthy market.

By Tom Blumer | November 27, 2015 | 11:24 PM EST

Twenty years of economic growth averaging less than 1 percent have failed to convince Japan's leaders — and apparently its citizens — that Keynesian-style government spending and handouts are not the answer to turning that long-suffering nation's economy around.

So the Shinzo Abe government, fresh from learning that the country is in yet another recession — its fifth since 2008 — is doing more of the same, while counting on press shills around the world like the Associated Press's Elaine Kurtenbach to be gentle in their coverage. Kurtenbach cooperated as expected early Friday morning (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

By Tom Blumer | November 27, 2015 | 7:00 PM EST

Ever since the White House changed hands almost seven years ago, press reports on the U.S. economy have annoyingly overaccentuated whatever positives reporters might find (or think they have found), while ignoring glaring negatives and omitting key items.

One example of such biased reporting came from the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger on Wednesday. In covering the Census Bureau's October Durable Goods report, Crutsinger praised its one-month seasonally adjusted increases in new orders and shipments. While that news was welcome, the AP reporter ignored the ugly fact that October's actual (i.e., not seasonally adjusted) year-over-year figure was lower than October 2014, marking the seventh straight month of year-over-year declines. He also didn't address shipments, which have been flat compared to to the same month last year for the past four months, at all.

By Brad Wilmouth | November 27, 2015 | 4:46 PM EST

Appearing as a guest on Friday's Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield on CNN to discuss Chicago protests that threaten to disrupt Black Friday shopping, liberal CNN political commentator Marc Lamont Hill suggested that the police had arrested the killer of a nine-year-old boy because it "diverts attention" from the recent release of the police shooting video of Laquan McDonald.

He also seemed to suggest that by shopping that blacks are "funding our own genocide" as he brushed off concerns about the protesters hurting the shopping season.

By Curtis Houck | November 27, 2015 | 4:36 PM EST

Joining host Chris Hayes on Wednesday’s pre-Thanksgiving edition of MSNBC’s All In, MSNBC political analyst and former Democratic Vermont Governor Howard Dean tried to trash the Republican Party as nothing but “an authoritarian party” “for a very long time” due to their policy positions on voter I.D. and abortion to name a few.