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 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 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 Tom Blumer | December 8, 2015 | 3:53 PM EST

In the debate over whether persons whose names are on the "no-fly list" should be denied their constitutional right to purchase a gun, one quite predictable thing has happened. Now that President Barack Obama has come out in favor of such a move in a nationally televised speech — to the point of wondering "What could possibly be the argument?" for opposing him — The ACLU, which 5 years ago strongly opposed it in official congressional testimony, is now trying to appear noncommittal while paying lip service to due-process rights.

That was to be expected, as the ACLU is largely funded by wealthy leftist donors who strongly support curtailing Second Amendment rights, due process be damned. What has literally come out of far-left field as a pigs-must-be-flying surprise is an editorial in the Los Angeles Times which opposes Obama on this issue.

By Tom Blumer | December 7, 2015 | 2:04 AM EST

At the Associated Press Sunday evening, White House Correspondent Julie Pace's coverage of President Obama's Oval Office address was predictably weak.

One could cite at least a half-dozen problems with Pace's story, but two of them were particularly disingenuous.

By Tom Blumer | December 6, 2015 | 6:07 PM EST

As shown early this morning, the press's redefinition of the term "mass shooting" has turned into a nearly omnipresent meme virtually overnight in the wake of Wednesday's Islamic terrorist massacre in San Bernardino, California. Under the new, demonstrably indefensible definition which not only breaks with past practice but also pretends it never existed, there have been 355 "mass shootings" so far this year in the U.S. As consistently defined for many previous years, the actual number is 4.

Just two months ago, the incurably left-biased "fact checker" site Politifact, in evaluating a "mass shooting" total of 294 claimed by Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, asserted that she "used an overly broad definition of what most people would consider a mass shooting."

By Tom Blumer | December 6, 2015 | 1:06 AM EST

At the Washington Post's Wonkblog on Wednesday, Christopher Ingraham claimed that the San Bernardino massacre, which we now know was an act of Islamic terrorism, was the "355th" mass shooting "this year." A Google search on "355th mass shooting this year" (not in quotes) indicates that the stat has become a media meme, repeated at places like the Today Show, PBS, NPR, NBCnews.com, and too many others to mention.

In a New York Times op-ed on Thursday — one which predictably appears not to have made the paper's print edition — Mark Follman, national affairs editor at Mother Jones, of all places, wrote that Ingraham and others in the media, including the Times itself are wrong — by a factor of 89. As consistently defined until very recently, there have been four mass shootings in the U.S. year, and 73 since 1982.

By Tom Blumer | December 5, 2015 | 10:43 AM EST

On November 18, Scott Eric Kaufman, an assistant editor at Salon, clearly thought that he had identified easy objects for ridicule in Megyn Kelly and former radical Muslim fundamentalist Morten Storm.

Kaufman ridiculed Fox as "nightmare fuel for elderly white people who just want to celebrate Christmas" after Storm, a former al Qaeda terrorist, predicted that "within the next two weeks, we will have an attack" on U.S. soil on a "softer target." Kaufman really ought to be more careful about whom he mocks — but then again, he's at Salon, where there's apparently no accountability, or sense of shame.

By Tom Blumer | December 3, 2015 | 11:44 PM EST

Democratic U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer of California today cited how her home state's "important gun safety laws" demonstrate that “Sensible gun laws work, we’ve proven it in California, and we're not going to give up." She apparently means that she and others who won't respect the Second Amendment are "not going to give up" on passing or imposing similar legislation or mandates nationally.

Ms. Boxer apparently failed to notice that San Bernardino, the site of yesterday's massacre of 14 at a San Bernardino County holiday party — with 21 others injured, many critically — is in her home state. A Republican or conservative making a similar observation almost immediateely after an event demonstrating an obviously contradictory point as Boxer did would be an object of relentless establishment press criticism and ridicule. But Boxer is a gun-grabbing leftist, so she'll likely get a near-complete pass. Video follows the jump.

By Tom Blumer | November 30, 2015 | 11:57 PM EST

If you think journalists' ignorance of American history and economic fundamentals is bad now, give it a few more years.

The University of North Carolina's School of Media and Journalism "has updated its curriculum requirements to give students more choice and flexibility in meeting the school’s graduation requirements. The change is in response to consistent feedback the school has received from students in its annual senior survey." You already know there's trouble if students who haven't been out in the real world yet are influencing the curriculum. Here's how much trouble:

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.