Associated Press

AP's Bauder Enlists As An Accomplice to the Cinematic Fraud of 'Truth'
By Tom Blumer | October 24, 2015 | 6:07 PM EDT

The press has consumed many barrels of ink and gigs of bandwidth providing free promotion for the eminently misnamed movie Truth, thus far virtually for naught.

On Thursday, the Associated Press's David Bauder did his part to generate interest by pretending, despite obviously forged documents and a virtually complete lack of anything resembling corroborating evidence, that what Dan Rather and Mary Mapes reported in 2004 about George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service might, as those two miscreants formerly employed by CBS still insist, be accurate.

Trudeaumania Part Deux Grips the Associated Press
By Tom Blumer | October 23, 2015 | 1:02 AM EDT

The folks at the Associated Press aren't even trying to disguise how pleased they are after Canada's most recent elections swept the Liberal Party into power after almost a decade in the wilderness.

They're claiming that victorious Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems destined to ignite the second installment of "Trudeaumania," the late-1960s press anointing which accompanied his father Pierre into that same position. It's quite clear that the AP is uninterested in informing readers about how awful Pierre Trudeau's actual record was. They instead want readers to believe that happy, reality-avoiding leftist days are here again.

AP's Crutsinger Fails to Investigate How Jobless Claims Stay Low With Slow Hiring
By Tom Blumer | October 22, 2015 | 4:13 PM EDT

If a Republican or conservative was in the White House, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger would have found a reason to be unimpressed in his dispatch today about how low initial unemployment claims continue to be, even as hiring has been slowing down. (Ideally, reporters should just relay the facts and leave the theorizing out of their stories, but that ship has sadly long since sailed.)

Crutsinger exhibited no real curiosity because a Democrat is in the White House. Therefore, it's left to New Media to at least get the alternative ideas out there; a contributor at the contrarian blog Zero Hedge did that several days ago. After the jump, readers will find most of Crutsinger's report covering the Department of Labor's initial claims release today, and a healthly chunk of the just-mentioned Zero Hedge analysis.

AP's Rugaber Fails to Note 21,000 Jobs Lost in Government's State Jobs Report
By Tom Blumer | October 21, 2015 | 6:55 PM EDT

On October 2, the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that U.S. payroll employment increased in September by a seasonally adjusted 142,000 jobs. That was disappointing enough, but then the BLS's regional and state report for September released on Tuesday showed a combined total of 21,000 jobs lost in all 50 states and DC.

In his coverage of the state report, the Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber didn't report this wide variance, even though the monthly national vs. total state difference is usually much smaller. The closest he got was reporting that more states lost jobs than gained them, which should have piqued his curiosity about how that result could happen when the nation somehow gained as many jobs as it did during the month, but apparently didn't (bolds are mine):

Hillary 'Faking a Southern Drawl' Again; Press Won't Question Her Genuineness
By Tom Blumer | October 20, 2015 | 5:56 PM EDT

Hillary Clinton was in Alabama a few days ago. As she has in the past at least two other times when south of the Mason-Dixon line, she decided that she could drop the letter "g" from several of her "i-n-g" words while affecting a sort-of Southern accent.

This time she was in Alabama. Mrs. Clinton cut the "g" from the at least the following words she has no trouble fully pronouncing when she's in other areas of the country: having ("havin'"), saying ("sayin'"), working ("workin'") and saving ("savin'"). She also bizarrely put the accent in the words "recession" and "depression" on the first syllable. No one in the establishment press appears to care about this apparent region-based condescension, though to be fair the video involved (but no related story I could find covering what she said in it) is from the Associated Press.

Press Mostly Ignores Hillary's Praise of Australia's De Facto Gun Confiscation
By Tom Blumer | October 17, 2015 | 11:21 PM EDT

The establishment press is mostly ignoring what Hillary Clinton said about gun control at a New Hampshire town hall meeting on Friday morning. Searches on "Clinton Australia" (not in quotes), attempting to find her statement that a massive, coercive gun "buyback" such as that seen in the Land Down Under almost 20 years ago "would be worth considering doing it on the national level," indicate that the Associated Press has nothing, and that the New York Times web site has nothing. Related Google News results are overwhelmingly from center-right blogs and outlets.

Of the two exceptions I could find as of 10 p.m., one came from CNN. The other was a syndicated story from the New York Times which hadn't yet appeared at the Times's web site. Predictably, both are "conservatives attack" pieces which cherry-picked the NRA's criticism of Mrs. Clinton's remarks.

AP Fails to Cite Work Requirement As a Reason for Maine's Food Stamp Enrollment Decline
By Tom Blumer | October 16, 2015 | 10:03 PM EDT

A week ago (late on a Friday afternoon, naturally), the Obama administration released food stamp enrollment figures for July. Despite millions of Americans finding work during the past several years, the data continued a national trend of little to no meaningful decline in enrollment.

Seasonally adjusted Household Survey employment is now 148.8 million, slightly above its prerecession November 2007 peak of 146.6 million. Meanwhile, current food stamp enrollment, at 45.5 million, is far greater than the 2007 average of 26.2 million. There is a small exception to this disturbing situation. It's in Maine, where enrollment has declined by over 20 percent since 2009. Those wondering why didn't find anything resembling a complete answer in a brief Associated Press report Tuesday (presented in full because of its brevity and for fair use and discussion purposes):

DWS BS: Schultz Did Not Tell 'About a Dozen' Dem Officials About Number of Debates
By Tom Blumer | October 14, 2015 | 11:07 PM EDT

Democratic National Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has insisted that she consulted with all of her vice-chairs before deciding on the number of Democratic presidential primary debates would be held.

John Heilemann of Bloomberg Politics, in what Hot Air's Jazz Shaw described as "a rare moment of" someone in the press actually "doing their job" in fact-checking leftists, reported this morning that "I cannot find a vice-chair who was consulted in advance by Debbie Wasserman Schultz." The rest of the press appears to be completely disinterested in reporting on the DNC chair's obvious and blatant falsehood.

The Media's Pope-pourri of Distortion
By Tony Perkins | October 10, 2015 | 11:27 AM EDT

In the largest security detail in American history, there's no such thing as a "chance" meeting. But that's exactly what the media is claiming took place between Pope Francis and Kentucky's Kim Davis. Frustrated by the Pope's obvious support for the jailed clerk, the press is stirring up speculation about whether the conversation even took place.

Will Press Cover State Dept. Envoy Declaring Russia's Bombing Shows Obama's Syria Policy Is Working?
By Tom Blumer | October 8, 2015 | 5:15 PM EDT

It seems more than fair to say that establishment press coverage of the deteriorating situation in Syria has been much lighter than what we'd see if a Republican or conservatives was in the Oval Office. Additionally, what has been reported in the admittedly complicated situation has been confusing at best and misleading at worst.

There was a moment of disconcerting clarity today which, if reported, should disturb even those Americans who only have a vague understanding of what's going on in that country. As reported by Tim Mak and Nancy A. Youssef at The Daily Beast:

AP's Taylor Touts 'Improved' Fiscal 2015 Deficit, Ignores Record Taxes, Spending
By Tom Blumer | October 7, 2015 | 7:02 PM EDT

Over at the Associated Press, Andrew Taylor, contrary to the wire service's usual practice, referenced a pre-official Congressional Budget Office report to tout the federal government's "improved" budget deficit. The CBO estimates that the deficit, which won't become official until the Treasury Department releases its final Monthly Treasury Statement of the fiscal year in the next week or two, will come in at $435 billion.

Predictably, Taylor didn't disclose three facts he could easily have relayed in his brief report's available space, instead choosing to create artificial drama over deadlines which are three weeks and two months away, respectively:

Press Ignoring Unsettling News For Global Warming's True Believers
By Tom Blumer | October 7, 2015 | 10:25 AM EDT

On Saturday, conservative Australian columnist Miranda Devine revealed that an Australian engineer claims to have "fixed two errors" in "the basic climate model which underpins all climate science."

The person making this claim was a "climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office," and has "six degrees in applied mathematics." What he found is that "the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought." While some U.S. blogs have begun to relay the news (examples here, here and here), the nation's establishment press is ignoring it.