The bar-lowering in the business press continues.
In the wake of today's disappointing news from the government on U.S. economic growth, an email from CNNMoney.com failed to properly describe reported second-quarter growth, and falsely characterized today's results as "solid":
Of all the media memes ever attempted, the one blaming Republicans for the fact that now-resigned Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Aruchleta was confirmed is high on the list of the most ridiculous ever. A reasonably close runnerup is the idea that Congress failed "to adequately fund OPM."
Matt Balan at NewsBusters covered CNN's ridiculous tweeted claim that "Republicans acknowledge ... they didn't properly vet Archuleta's qualifications." It's as if only Republicans — who, I must remind the media herd, were in the minority in the Senate in late 2013 when she was confirmed, and who opposed her by a 35-8 margin — were the only ones responsible for vetting this woman. Why isn't the press asking Harry Reid why his Senate Democratic Party majority didn't do its job? Far more fundamentally, did the president's responsibility for selecting competent people vanish when Barack Obama was elected?
CNN Politics's Twitter account on Friday pointed the finger at congressional Republicans over the now-former director of the Office of Personnel Management's responsibility for the massive hacking there that compromised the personal data of over 22 million people. A post hyped that "Republicans acknowledge to [correspondent] @evanperez they didn't properly vet [Katherine] Archuleta's qualifications."
One would think that a presidential candidate falsely claiming that she never was subpoenaed would be bigger news story than people in the opposing party criticizing that candidate after the fact for her obviously false statement. As Tim Graham at NewsBusters noted late this afternoon, that's not the case. This post contains several more examples.
At CNN, the network's own Brianna Keilar, who conducted the interview during which Hillary Clinton denied ever receiving a congressional committee's subpoena for her work-related emails, "sharply criticized the Democratic presidential contender’s performance" for failing to answer several questions satisfactorily and for not even "engaging" when asked others. Despite Keilar's disappointment, beat reporters Jeff Zeleny and Tom LoBianco at CNN.com went light on Mrs. Clinton, and highlighted Republican critics.
According to CNN's Brian Selter on Wednesday night, NBC News will announce that suspended NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams will not return to the anchor desk when his six-month suspension ends in August for having perpetuated lies about numerous stories he’s covered in his career. The network has stated that Williams will assume a new role in the network.
Peter denied Jesus three times but Hillary Clinton appears to have a much more difficult task; she is going to have to deny herself at least 45 times.
Last Friday, Hillary Clinton's spokesperson, Karen Finney, appeared on CNN's The Lead and exasperated Jake Tapper by continuing to avoid avoid answering the important question as to whether her boss still supports or opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade bill in Congress. Not a good move in the long run because yesterday Tapper struck back by listing in detail with her own quotes 45 times that Hillary pushed the trade bill over the years. First Tapper writes about Hillary's current reluctance to back the trade bill in stark contrast to the many times she strongly supported it in the past:
The folks at MSNBC exhibited a sick sense of "humor" on Friday.
As Gateway Pundit's Kristinn Taylor reported Friday afternoon, the network posted "a video to MSNBC’s Facebook page that mocks police over a criminal dragging a police officer by a car as he attempted to flee ..." The post asked the following question, which was also tweeted: "Does it count as a police chase if you take the cop along for the ride?"
On Saturday, the Twitter account of CNN Politics posted a cartoon portrayal of Hillary Clinton to promote an article about the Democratic presidential candidate's visit to her campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, New York. The caricature depicted Mrs. Clinton in "6 things Hillary could use in Brooklyn," and placed a cup of "artisinal (sic) coffee" in her hand, a floral print suit with matching "skinny pants," silver Birkenstocks, iPhone earbuds, and Warby Parker eyeglass frames.
Rush Limbaugh posted an interesting pair of questions at his web site yesterday: "How can CNN still be on the air with no audience? How can MSNBC have been on the air with no audience? In the old days, they're gone, kaput. Something else is tried. But they stay. And they double down on what they're doing that's losing audience."
A large part of the answer, as I noted on March 30, is that those two networks apparently have suffered very little financially as they have lost audience. That's because, as is apparently the case with most of the major cable channels, their primary source of revenue comes from "subscriptions," also referred to as "carriage fees" or "license fee revenues." In plain English, cable channels get paid a great deal of money even if nobody watches them, and don't benefit as much as would be expected when their audience grows.
Journalists' and leftists' (but I repeat myself) misguided love for Cuba goes back decades. Y'know, free healthcare (cough), yada-yada.
Now that President Obama is unilaterally changing the relationship between the two nations, and as usual getting nothing in return, you'd think that they'd be happy. Heck no. It started several months ago when Fox News's Shepard Smith fretted about how a thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations might "ruin the place," and has been echoed in many quarters since then. Early today, CNN International went over the top, essentially communicating in one picture their concern that the changed situation will "ruin" what has already been ruined:
On Saturday, CNN hyped actress and self-appointed "lifestyle guru" Gwyneth Paltrow's participation in the "Food Stamp Challenge." This is the fundamentally dishonest campaign which has been working for at least eight years to convince Americans that benefits provided under the federal government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are inadequate.
As usual, Paltrow has taken up the challenge to get by for a week on a drastically understated amount which does not reflect the program's real provisions. As has almost always been the case with journalists covering politicians, celebrities and others who have taken up the "challenge," CNN's Jareen Imam didn't question the correctness of the weekly amount involved:
So Harry Reid knew he was lying about Mitt Romney not paying taxes for ten years when he made the claim in 2012 from the lawsuit-free zone known as the floor of the U.S. Senate, but didn't care.
That's what one must conclude from Reid's response to CNN's Dana Bash about that statement. Asked on the network's New Day program if he regrets what he said, Reid responded: "Romney didn't win, did he?" Rather than question Reid's outrageously cynical "end justifies the means" mentality, Bash's edited interview moved on to another topic.