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Barely News: Illinois Gov. Quinn Pulls Tweets Comparing Black Republicans to Jewish Nazi Collaborators
By Tom Blumer | April 25, 2014 | 8:11 PM EDT

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):

On Boston Bombing Anniversary, CNN Analyst Says U.S. Right-Wing Extremists Kill More Than Jihadists
By Kristine Marsh | April 15, 2014 | 4:13 PM EDT

Are “right-wing” extremists more dangerous than Al-Qaeda terrorists? According to CNN’s National Security Analyst Peter Bergen, they are. In a CNN commentary posted yesterday Bergen wrote, “U.S. right wing extremists [are] more deadly than jihadists.” He also also happens to be a director for the George Soros-funded liberal New America Foundation. What a coincidence.

 Bergen claimed that “white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists and anti-government militants have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda’s ideology.” He cited a New America study which counted 34 people killed by right-wing extremist acts and just 23 people killed by Al Qaeda-linked terrorism, after 9/11. Why start there? Wouldn’t the 2,977 people killed that day by jihadists skew those findings somewhat?

CNN.com Finally Gets to the Leland Yee Story — 13 Days Late
By Tom Blumer | April 8, 2014 | 10:52 PM EDT

Let it be noted that at 7:17 p.m. on Tuesday, April 8, 2014, CNN.com finally broke down and posted a story on the alleged criminal behavior of California State Senator Leland Yee. The headline at the story by Matt Smith and Jason Carroll ("Feds: Calif. pol Leland Yee schemed to trade arms for campaign cash") gets to the heart of the matter — unlike the headline ("LAWMAKER YEE PLEADS NOT GUILTY TO FEDERAL CHARGES") at the Associated Press's most recent story on Yee. But Smith and Carroll waited until the fourth paragraph to tag Yee as a Democrat (the AP story at least got there at Paragraph 3).

CNN's story arrives 13 days after Yee's initial arrest, and 11 days, 9 hours and 58 minutes after a snippy person at the "CNN.com Writers" Twitter account — apparently one Eliott McLaughlin, according to the account's home page — claimed that its non-coverage of the Yee story was "in line with us covering state senators & state secretary of state races just about never." Yours truly disproved that assertion in about three minutes on March 29.

AP Headline Falsely Claims 'U.S. Finally Regains The Jobs Lost in the Recession'
By Tom Blumer | April 4, 2014 | 11:39 PM EDT

This afternoon, in an unbylined item headlined "US BUSINESS HIRING FINALLY TOPS RECESSION LOSSES," the Associated Press showed that it deserves the nickname "Administration's Press." The story embarrassingly described the job market's return to its previous January 2008 employment peak as a "pivotal moment." Get real. Given over six additional years of growth in the adult population, that's hardly the case.

To his credit, the AP's Christopher Rugaber, in a separate later submission, tamped down the enthusiasm, noting that "the economy is still millions of jobs short of where it should be by now." That's for sure. But whoever wrote the headline to Rugaber's story told an obvious untruth:

CNN, ESPN Writer Condemns Christians for Judging Gays
By Kristine Marsh | March 31, 2014 | 3:25 PM EDT

Oh the irony. On CNN March 30, openly gay ESPN journalist LZ Granderson asked  “Will Christians condemn persecution of gays?” in an article that’s whole point seemed to be a condemnation of Christians’ views on homosexualty.

While Granderson asks why Christians don’t condemn gay persecution (they do), it’s funny how the gay community is never asked to defend the open persecution and slaughter of thousands of Christians in places like Egypt and Syria.

AP Ignores Why Vegas Culinary Workers Have Authorized Strike: Obamacare
By Tom Blumer | March 30, 2014 | 10:13 AM EDT

The headline and first paragraph at an Associated Press item on a union strike authorization vote in Las Vegas are both far more vague than they could or should be.

Though the rest of Ken Ritter's coverage at least identifies the union involved, it completely fails to get to the heart of the matter, which is that Obamacare is causing huge increases in their employers' cost of providing health care coverage. Culinary Union Local 226 wants their casino company employers to, well, eat those costs, and the companies are resisting. Ritter's coverage, which to those who understand the full background reads like an exercise in stall-ball, never even specifically says that health benefits are this potential strike's key issue (bolds are mine throughout this post):

CNN.com Hasn't Covered Leland Yee Arrest, Gets Snippy When Challenged
By Tom Blumer | March 29, 2014 | 8:39 PM EDT

Although its report has its shortcomings, particularly the fact that it didn't identify him as a Democrat for 24 paragraphs (as noted this morning), the Associated Press has at least treated California State Senator Leland Yee's arrest on corruption and gun trafficking charges as a national story, with two bylined reporters and seven others assisting.

The same cannot be said of CNN.com. Web searchers, including several center-right bloggers, have noted the absence of any story about Yee there since 2011 (still true as of 6:30 p.m.). A tweet from "CNN.com Writers" snippily snapped back with a howler disproved faster than you can say "covering Democrats' keisters":

CNN Email Touts 6 Million Obamacare Sign-ups As 'Symbolic Victory'
By Tom Blumer | March 28, 2014 | 9:14 AM EDT

Call it low-information voter outreach.

An email yesterday from CNNMoney touted how fantastic it was that Obamacare enrollment has reached the six million threshold, even describing it as a "symbolic victory." Though the underlying article by Tami Luhby at least noted the problems with that 6 million figure, those problems should have been enough to negate that characterization. Instead, Luhby repeated it in her coverage (bolds are mine):

CNN Plays 'Hide the Story' As GOP Wins Key Fla. House Race
By Tom Blumer | March 12, 2014 | 9:58 AM EDT

Last night, I noted that the Associated Press had not deigned to consider Republican David Jolly's victory over Democrat Alex Sink in the FL-13 Congressional race a "Top U.S. Story" as of 10:13 p.m. To AP's credit (or perhaps because of yours truly's and others' razzing?), a story about the race was at the Number 6 spot in Top U.S. Stories as of 8:15 this morning.

CNN.com, on the other hand (HT to NewsBusters commenter "Jon"), is clearly playing "hide the story" with the Jolly-Sink race. Its worldwide home page as of 8:38 a.m. had one line item titled "GOP wins year's 1st election showdown" halfway down the page, and a tiny picture in the "Politics" section near the bottom of the page headlined "GOP Scores First 2014 Win." Could they be any more vague? Its U.S. home page as of 7:37 a.m. had no reference to the race at all.

CNN Grasps to Find Silver Lining for Liberals in Pope's Pro-Traditional Marriage Answer
By Matthew Balan | March 5, 2014 | 4:30 PM EST

On Wednesday, CNN's Daniel Burke gave liberal-tinged spin/extrapolation about Pope Francis's answer to an Italian newspaper's question about secular civil unions. Burke asserted in a CNN.com article that the pontiff "reaffirmed the Catholic Church's opposition to gay marriage...but suggested in a newspaper interview that it could support some types of civil unions."

However, the journalist left out that despite the Bishop of Rome's generalized answer, he concretely opposed a proposed civil unions bill in Malta near the end of 2013. More recently, the Pope's spokesman lashed out at the Italian media in January 2014 for spinning a separate remark from the native of Argentina as "an opening to legal provision for civil unions for gay couples, a subject of debate in Italy."

Press Reluctant to Call Russia's Crimea Takeover an 'Invasion'; No Such Hesitation in 1970 with Cambodia
By Tom Blumer | March 3, 2014 | 3:51 PM EST

The Obama administration's most recent abuse of the English language late last week involved its reluctance bordering on refusal to call Russia's military move into Crimea an "invasion." The press, unlike in 1970 when Richard Nixon sent U.S. troops into Cambodia for under three months, is largely following suit.

CNN (HT Hot Air) began the Team Obama-driven festivities on Friday by reporting that "According to the latest U.S. assessment, there has been an uncontested arrival of Russian military forces by air at a Russian base in Crimea. They are believed to be Russian land forces, CNN was told."

Outrageous: Russian TV Anchor Mocks Iwo Jima Memorial As Homoerotic In War-Statue Spat With CNN
By Tim Graham | February 16, 2014 | 7:38 AM EST

The London Daily Mail reported this week that “CNN caused a firestorm when it included a war monument in Brest, a city in the former Soviet republic of Belarus, in an article on the 'world's ugliest monuments' published last month.” This isn’t Ted Turner’s CNN, where a reporter would be disciplined for saying the word “foreign” in a sentence. The online article from a travel-piece contributor was intended as humor.          

A Russian news commentator responded by suggesting the Marine Corps War Memorial – the Iwo Jima sculpture just north of Arlington National Cemetery – is “easy to mock” for its homoerotic look, and "you don't have to be very smart to get it." (video below):