Major Newspapers

This category contains postings about the largest newspapers in America. For other papers, look under "Regional News" for each state.

AP, Reuters Fail to Connect Latest A&P Bankruptcy to Its Unions
By Tom Blumer | July 20, 2015 | 6:54 PM EDT

The company officially known as the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. has filed for bankruptcy for the second time in five years. This time around, the storied "A&P" name may completely disappear.

Coverage at USA Today by Nathan Bomey notes that "About 93% (of its workers) are represented by one of 12 different unions, and many of them have bumping rights that the company has described as a big barrier to reducing costs." Coverage at two of the three major business wire services, the Associated Press and Reuters, failed to mention the word "union" at all.

NY Times Ignores Hillary Clinton's Stunning $18.7 Million in Second-Quarter Spending
By Tom Blumer | July 16, 2015 | 11:41 AM EDT

Nicholas Confessore and Maggie Haberman at the New York Times studiously avoided talking about Hillary Clinton's campaign spending in their front-page print edition story Thursday ("Hillary Clinton Lags in Engaging Grass-Roots Donors").

Mrs. Clinton hauled in $48.7 million, but she spent a stunning $18.7 million. As seen in a table accompanying the Times story, that's more than triple that of any other candidate in the race from either party — for someone with no worries about name recognition.

Unseemly Celebration: Today Revels in How Atticus Finch Has Been 'Knocked Off His Pedestal'
By Tom Blumer | July 13, 2015 | 10:12 PM EDT

The media instinct to trash all that is inspiring and noble was unmistakable in Monday morning's Today report on the new novel (Go Set a Watchman) by Harper Lee, the author of the widely celebrated, best-selling To Kill a Mockingbird, first published in 1960.

Debate has raged over whether Lee, who is in very poor health and whose mental competence has been questioned, ever wanted her manuscript to be released. "Today" totally ignored that important controversy. Wanted or not, the book officially hits the shelves on Tuesday. Watchman portrays Mockingbird hero Atticus Finch in his old age as "a racist" who is "opposed to that era's reforms, like desegregation, even attending a Ku Klux Klan meeting." Naturally, Today contends that "many feel" (media-speak for "we believe") that the new book's "broader moral themes" are "just as vivid now as they were in the 1950s" because of "racial tensions" in Ferguson and Charleston.

EOnline Further Distorts NY Times Scott Walker Hit Piece
By Tom Blumer | July 13, 2015 | 5:02 PM EDT

Here is an object lesson in how the perceptions of low-information voters are shaped to the disadvantage of Republican and conservative candidates.

In the daily email I receive from Eonline.com (subscribing to the web site’s missives is a necessary evil), the fifth item listed read: “Scott Walker Announces 2016 Presidential Run.” (Curiously, the web version of that email no longer links to the Walker item, perhaps indicating that someone at the web site is unhappy that it gave him any notice at all.) Two paragraphs near the end of the Eonline.com writeup tie back to the New York Times hit piece Tim Graham at NewsBusters critiqued earlier this afternoon. Rebecca Macatee's writeup makes it appear as if the Walker campaign itself is seriously concerned about how the nation perceives him (link is in original; bolds are mine):

Oh-So-Predictable USA Today: Murder Rates Up, Poor and Minorities Hardest Hit, Guns to Blame
By Tom Blumer | July 12, 2015 | 11:07 PM EDT

Aamer Madhani at USA Today took the easy way out on Friday in covering the sharp increases in murders in many U.S. cities during the first half of this year.

He quoted Milwaukee's police chief bemoaning "absurdly weak" gun laws. He noted that "the increased violence is disproportionately impacting poor and predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods." He found a university prof to allege that there's a lack of resources to "fund a proactive law enforcement." What rubbish. The fact is that the "broken windows" approach to law enforcement, the "proactive law enforcement" initiative pioneered in New York City under Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s which made New York one of the safest cities in America, is being systematically discredited by the left and abandoned by many police departments, with all too predictable results.

NY Times Blames Dylann Roof's Gun Purchase on 'System' Loophole, Then 'Law' Loophole
By Tom Blumer | July 11, 2015 | 11:54 PM EDT

Apparently nothing is ever the government's fault during the Obama era — even a clear failure by authorities to prevent an alleged mass-murderer from acquiring a gun, and their failure to retrieve it once he obtained it.

Earlier today, before it went down the paper's frequently used memory hole, reporter Michael S. Schmidt wrote in his second paragraph that alleged mass murderer Dylann Roof got a gun despite having a disqualifying drug-possession arrest because of "A loophole in the (national background check) system and an error by the F.B.I." After apparently pushback from some readers, Schmidt revised his report, moving his "loophole" language to a much later paragraph, and characterized it as a problem with "the law," which is still completely wrong.

CNN, Others Go Light on Hillary's 'Not Subpoenaed' Lie
By Tom Blumer | July 9, 2015 | 10:57 PM EDT

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.

AP Admits: Obamacare Is a Likely Factor in 'Increasing Part-Time Employment'
By Tom Blumer | July 6, 2015 | 12:25 PM EDT

Though the Associated Press is now basically admitting it, we all knew it. Obamacare's 30-hours-per-week definition of a "full-time employee" for employer health insurance coverage purposes has been responsible for one of the fundamentally negative changes in the American workforce — a noticeable move away from full-time to part-time employment.

In a report with a current Saturday morning time stamp at the AP's national web site which originally went up on Friday, the wire service's Christopher Rugaber and Josh Boak covered the "new normal" in the job market. This writeup will receive yours truly's fuller attention later. But for now, I must note that the pair's report largely abandoned the AP's and the establishment press's years of near denial (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Former Obama Official Asks: 'Can Gay Marriage Defeat the Islamic State?'
By Tom Blumer | June 30, 2015 | 2:46 PM EDT

In a column at ForeignPolicy.com, a former Obama administration defense official who "served as a counselor to the U.S. defense undersecretary for policy from 2009 to 2011" has asked: "Can Gay Marriage Defeat the Islamic State?"

Rosa Brooks, who "is a law professor at Georgetown University," is serious. Her earnestness and deep ignorance are especially troubling, because it's clear that there are many people who "think" just like her who are still in the Obama administration and at the State Department (See: John Kerry's slow-motion sellout in Iranian negotiations).

NY Times Wonders How Trillions Can Be 'Spent' But 'Crises Like Greece Persist'
By Tom Blumer | June 30, 2015 | 11:47 AM EDT

The current headline at a June 29 New York Times story by Peter Eavis, also appearing on the front page of today's print edition, is "Loads of Debt: A Global Ailment With Few Cures."

But the last portion of the story's web address is "... trillions-spent-but-crises-like-greeces-persist.html." That's because the original headline, the one used at the Times's Twitter account — was "Trillions Spent But Crises Like Greece Persist." Of course without admitting it, Eavis's writeup is an ode to the worldwide failure of Keynesian economics — a term which naturally never appears in any form — and the closed minds of those who don't understand why shoveling vast sums of money created out of thin air into the financial system is only marginally helpful in the short-term, and serious harmful, over the long-term.

AP Writer Dodges Own Question About the State of China's Slowing Economy
By Tom Blumer | June 29, 2015 | 3:12 PM EDT

The world's financial markets had a terrible Monday. The debt crisis in Greece (population: 11 million) has been dominating the headlines and the press's attention, while serious deterioration in China (population: 1.36 billion) is getting short shrift.

It isn't just that the mainland Chinese stock market has broken the bear-market decline threshold of 20 percent in less than three weeks, dropping 21.5 percent from its June 12 peak. Its underlying economy, to the extent that such things can be ascertained in an information-controlled and news-manipulated society, appears to be in serious trouble. Associated Press reporter Ken Sweet, in a Friday Q&A writeup, emulated the worst tendencies of politicians. He posed a question about China's economy, "answered" it with a complete dodge, and pretended that its economy hasn't started slowing yet (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Bob Costas Rips Cubs Pitcher, Unmasks Intense Hostility Towards Religious Expression
By Tom Blumer | June 29, 2015 | 8:57 AM EDT

To be clear, professional sports broadcasting is thankfully long past the time when the announcers would annoyingly sugarcoat dismal player performances. (Though I would prefer that those who actually played the game engage in this criticism, and that play-by-play announcers who haven't try to stay away from it.)

So it would have been somewhat acceptable if veteran NBC broadcaster Bob Costas, as he was doing the play-by-play for a Friday night Chicago Cubs-St. Louis Cardinals game, had merely stated the obvious, i.e., that Cubs relief pitcher Pedro Strop, after giving up a home run, hitting a batter, and walking one while only getting one out, had an "atrocious" outing. But that's not what he said. Costas ripped into Strop for (imagine that) looking up and pointing to the heavens as he headed towards the Cubs' dugout.