A review of the "Big Story" archive at the Associated Press's national site on Jesse Jackson's name returns quite a few instances where the wire service has treated the "Reverend's" self-injection into stories considered nationally important as noteworthy.

In addition to the predictable plethora of stories relating to Ferguson, Missouri and "police-communities tension," Jackson's name has recently appeared in two stories about a Chicago area Little League team stripped of its national title over "falsified boundaries," tech jobs for minorities, an Ebola patient and several relating to the National Football League. But somehow, Jackson's endorsement of Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, who is challenging incumbent Chicago Democratic Mayor and former Barack Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel in its April 7 runoff election, is not a "Big Story" or present anywhere else on AP's national site, indicating that the wire service considers it a mere local item.

A search at the Associated Press's national site on the last name of Illinois Governor Patrick Quinn and "Jews" at 7:30 this evening returned nothing.

That's pretty amazing, considering that Quinn's campaign enthusiastically retweeted its support for an outrageous April 17 column by Neil Steinberg at the Chicago Sun-Times. For all practical purposes, Steinberg equated African-Americans who might support Republican Bruce Rauner in November's gubernatorial election against Quinn to "Jews (who) collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, helping them to round up their own people in the hopes they’d be the last to go." Quinn's people quietly deleted the tweets, according to the Washington Free Beacon's Adam Kredo, "after local Jewish community officials quietly communicated their outrage to the governor." Given that the time between the tweets and the deletes was apparently a few days, and that the sort-of apologies came almost a week after Steinberg's column, I'm not detecting a lot of sincerity here. Coverage from CNN's Political Ticker follows the jump (bolds are mine; links are in original):

Ever eager to dutifully further White House spin, veteran Obama apologist Lynn Sweet hacked out a blog post this afternoon lamenting that "Michelle Obama’s White House garden [is] a weed-filled wreck, victim of shutdown."

Sweet set out to convince readers that while the White House veggie garden was the first lady's "signature project," she was powerless to thwart the ravages of Mother Nature as the shutdown furloughed gardeners who tended to the plants. Apparently the First Lady can't work the garden herself with some capable volunteers from local charities like Miriam's Kitchen helping her, even though she used those folks for a harvesting photo-op in October 2009 (emphasis mine):

Note: This post contains graphic language and subject matter, and links to more of the same.

The UK Daily Mail has already reported that "The three boys alleged to have gunned down an Australian baseball player out for a run because they were 'bored' were influenced by an ultra-violent rapper." Specifically, "rather than being part of any gang, which had been suggested before, authorities believe the boys were just wannabes who were emulating the thuggish beliefs of their idols, with Chief Keef being prime suspect." The Chicago Sun-Times posted a similar story.

It turns out that Kenan Kinard, the unapprehended suspect in the murder of 89 year-old World War II veteran Delbert Belton in Spokane, Washington, whose full name, according to the Associated Press, is Kenan D. Adams-Kinard, also identifies himself (screen grab for future reference) as a fan of Chief Keef's "music" (I could not locate a Facebook page for Demetrius Glenn, the apprehended suspect). Who is Chief Keef, and what is he all about? That's after the jump, and it's not for the faint of heart.

One of the things that self-described “mainstream” reporters like to tout about themselves is that they do not publish stories without trying to talk to the people discussed in them.

Apparently those rules do not apply at the Chicago Sun-Times when the subject of a hit piece is former Republican congressman Joe Walsh. The paper on Monday posted a story attacking him but did not give him a chance to respond to the allegation before it ran with the piece.