Michigan

WashPost Aids ACLU: Catholic Hospital vs. 'Pregnant Woman with Brain Tumor'
By Tim Graham | September 14, 2015 | 1:19 PM EDT

In the run-up to the papal visit to America, The Washington Post keeps pushing stories against allegedly heartless Catholic positions on the life issues. On Monday’s front page, they promoted this story: “A Catholic hospital in Michigan cited religious reasons for refusing to perform a tubal ligation requested by a woman with a brain tumor.” (Emphasis theirs.)

The headline on page A-3 was “Mich. hospital faces ACLU suit: Pregnant woman with brain tumor was denied sterilization surgery.” Post “social change” reporter Sandhya Somashekhar promoted the ACLU’s staunch opposition to Catholic hospitals having anti-feminist hangups about abortion and sterilization. 

Michigan Student Fired, Apartment Vandalized For Article Mocking Political Correctness
By Connor Williams | December 18, 2014 | 1:47 PM EST

In case you missed it, censorship of ideas that do not adhere to liberal orthodoxy is happening at the University of Michigan. The PC police have struck once again. A Muslim student, Omar Mahmood, wrote a satirical piece titled "Do the Left Thing" for the conservative Michigan Review mocking social justice fads like trigger warnings and micro-aggressions, but also political correctness in general. The result? A firing and a vandalized apartment.

Pro-Lifers at Michigan College Get 'Who Let These F---ers on Campus?'
By Tim Graham | September 26, 2014 | 10:50 PM EDT

Kelli Kopetz at JillStanek.com reported on the kind of guff that pro-life protesters get on campus.
Students for Life set up an informative Planned Parenthood Project display at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. The display features statistics about Planned Parenthood from the organization’s own annual reports. An unhappy feminist student asked as she passed by (several times), “Who let these f***ers on campus?” (See the video.)

Another Sunday LGBT Sermon from the WashPost: 'When No Gender Fits'
By Tim Graham | September 21, 2014 | 9:10 AM EDT

The Washington Post has made it clear that Sunday is not the Lord’s Day. It’s the best day for LGBT preaching. In 2012, they splashed across the front page “TRANSGENDER AT FIVE.” In this Sunday edition, it’s an 18-year-old girl: “WHEN NO GENDER FITS.”

As usual, “the world” is having trouble sympathetically understanding girls who don’t want to be their “assigned” gender. Over a large color photograph of the girl in question tying her own necktie are the words “The world insists, in a host of way, that Kelsey Beckham choose: Male or female? But what feels most right to Kelsey is neither.”

AP's Ed White Revises Earlier Report to Avoid Directly Tagging Convicted Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick as a Dem
By Tom Blumer | October 11, 2013 | 10:15 AM EDT

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in prison yesterday. As has been the case for nearly six years as his scandals and prosecution have unfolded (seen here in dozens of NewsBusters posts), press coverage has usually avoided the inconvenient fact that Kilpatrick is a Democrat, and almost completely ignored Barack Obama's hearty endorsement of him during the early stages of his 2008 presidential campaign. A YouTube video from a May 2007 speech at the Detroit Economic Club shows Obama thanking Kilpatrick for "doing an outstanding job of gathering together the leadership at every level of Detroit, to bring about the kind of renaissance that all of us anticipate for this great city."

News outlets failing to note Kilpatrick's Democratic Party affiliation yesterday included the New York Times, CBS in Detroit, the Detroit Free Press in an item carried at USA Today, and Mike Tobin at Fox News. The Associated Press outdid itself in this regard, as will be explained after the jump.

Detroit TV Station Lets Ridiculous Claim That McDonalds 'Made Like $500 Billion Last Year' Stand
By Tom Blumer | August 30, 2013 | 7:02 AM EDT

Vickie Thomas and the news department at Detroit TV station WWJ really ought to be ashamed of themselves. The open question is whether they even know enough to be ashamed.

In reporting on a Motor City McDonald's store which was forced to close — whether it was for a few hours or all day and night isn't disclosed — Thomas quoted a "protester" claiming that "McDonald’s made like $500 billion last year." Most readers would interpret "made" as the company's annual profit. The company's worldwide net income in 2012 was $5.5 billion, barely 1 percent of the protester's completely unchallenged figure. The "like $500 billion" cited and allowed to stand is also 14 times larger than the $35.6 billion in gross sales at all of McDonald's U.S. franchised and company-owned stores.

Ed Schultz: I Don’t Care If It’s Been Ruled By Democrats, Republican Policies Destroyed Detroit
By Noel Sheppard | August 29, 2013 | 6:34 PM EDT

Sometimes you have to wonder if anyone at MSNBC is actually watching what is being said on the network.

On Thursday’s Ed Show, host Ed Schultz actually said, “Thanks to Republican policies, and I don't care if [Detroit's] been under Democratic rule or not, it's Republican policies that have come down from the state and the country that have put this city in a bad position” (video follows with commentary):

MSNBC's Schultz: Democracy is Dead in Detroit, Republican 'Parasites' to Blame
By Andrew Lautz | August 5, 2013 | 4:28 PM EDT

Ed Schultz has spent weeks blaming Detroit’s recent bankruptcy filing on Republican policies, even though the city has been firmly in Democratic hands for decades. The bombastic MSNBC host has called the city a “conservative utopia,” arguing that Republican anti-union policies have “gutted Detroit.”

Schultz’s latest tirade came on Saturday’s The Ed Show, when the left-wing host bizarrely claimed that Republicans have “taken democracy away from Detroit.” Schultz further suggested that Republicans “circumvent[ed] local elections in this country” and “discard[ed] what people want and say about their communities.”

Schultz Spews: Republicans Happy to See Detroit Go Bankrupt
By Andrew Lautz | July 22, 2013 | 4:25 PM EDT

On his eponymous Sunday program, Ed Schultz blamed Republicans for Detroit’s recent bankruptcy filing, implying that the GOP is “happy to see Detroit go bankrupt” and that Governor Rick Snyder (R-Mich.) is “swindling public workers out of their hard-earned pensions.” Schultz accused Republicans of wanting to “quit” and “surrender” on Detroit, launching into a 13-minute diatribe against Snyder and Republican policies of “free trade and outsourcing.”

The bombastic MSNBC host was also critical of Snyder’s efforts to remove blighted structures in the city, an effort funded by the Obama/Lew Treasury Department. Schultz blasted the federally-supported undertaking, claiming Snyder “wants to spend money to destroy the city”:

Former WashPost Reporter Blames Racial Bitterness, Political Corruption for Detroit's Decline and Fall
By Tim Graham | July 21, 2013 | 7:03 AM EDT

If you were wondering whether any liberal media veteran could have made the networks sound less clueless about the reasons for Detroit filing for bankruptcy, one answer was longtime Washington Post foreign correspondent Keith Richburg. In an article on the Post website (but not in the newspaper), Richburg wrote painfully about the demise of his beloved hometown, and how racial polarization and crime and political corruption have destroyed it.

His personal story, including his relatives who remained in the urban blight, offered the most gripping testimony:

On Detroit Bankruptcy, All Three Networks Skip the Sky High Taxes, Dem Control for 50 Years
By Scott Whitlock | July 19, 2013 | 11:17 AM EDT

 All three networks on Thursday night and Friday morning avoided key factors in the bankruptcy of Detroit, skipping the city's astronomically high tax rate and ignoring Democratic dominance for the previous half century. (Detroit's last Republican mayor left office in 1962.) Instead, ABC, NBC and CBS acted as though the bankruptcy, what Brian Williams called "the slow-moving tragedy of decline," was something that just happened.

On Good Morning America, Betty Liu gently summarized, "What happened here? Well, people have been leaving the city for years. Back in the 1950s, you had almost two million people, at the peak, living in Detroit. Now, just 700,000. So they've lost half their population." She added, "When you have fewer people living in the city, you're collecting less income and property taxes." Why are people fleeing the city? Lacking curiosity, Liu didn't bring that point up. [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Newspaper Editor Sues Readers for Defaming Her Character
By Randy Hall | July 18, 2013 | 11:36 AM EDT

Here's something you don't see every day: a newspaper editor suing six readers for $25,000 in damages including “humiliation, mortification and embarrassment,” “sleeplessness and anxiety” and “mental anguish.”

The lawsuit grew out of the actions of Lori Kilchermann, general manager and editor of the Ionia Sentinel-Standard in Michigan, who decided to accompany a story about a police methamphetamine bust with a photo of a Republican fund-raising event that had occured at the same location two years previously.