Online Media

Wash Post's Bump: My Doctor Trumps Hillary's Doctor in Assessing Her Health
By Tom Blumer | October 24, 2015 | 2:32 PM EDT

A mini-war broke out yesterday between the Washington Post's Philip Bump, who would apparently prefer to keep discussions of Hillary Clinton's health off the table, and Matt Drudge. As would be expected, Drudge won in a rout, while Bump continues to pretend that he didn't.

Bump, in his disingenuous Friday morning entry at the Post's all too appropriately named "The Fix" blog, told readers that his own doctor's opinion concerning Mrs. Clinton's health should trump Drudge's. Bump should have known better — maybe he did, and didn't care, rolling the dice on Drudge ignoring him. The issue isn't Bump's doctor, who has never examined Mrs. Clinton, versus Drudge. It's Bump's doctor versus a media-published statement made by Mrs. Clinton's own doctor.

Trudeaumania Part Deux Grips the Associated Press
By Tom Blumer | October 23, 2015 | 1:02 AM EDT

The folks at the Associated Press aren't even trying to disguise how pleased they are after Canada's most recent elections swept the Liberal Party into power after almost a decade in the wilderness.

They're claiming that victorious Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems destined to ignite the second installment of "Trudeaumania," the late-1960s press anointing which accompanied his father Pierre into that same position. It's quite clear that the AP is uninterested in informing readers about how awful Pierre Trudeau's actual record was. They instead want readers to believe that happy, reality-avoiding leftist days are here again.

CNN.com: 'Palestinians Shot Boarding Kids' Bus'; They Were Attempting to Murder Children!
By Ken Shepherd | October 22, 2015 | 9:28 PM EDT

Sometimes the bias happens right under your nose. Here's to the folks at StandWithUs for their eagle-eyed observation of bias earlier this evening during CNN's live broadcast of the Benghazi hearing. "Palestinians shot boarding kids' bus," reads the header. In truth, the perpetrators shot were terrorists intending on harming innocent children.
 

AP's Crutsinger Fails to Investigate How Jobless Claims Stay Low With Slow Hiring
By Tom Blumer | October 22, 2015 | 4:13 PM EDT

If a Republican or conservative was in the White House, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger would have found a reason to be unimpressed in his dispatch today about how low initial unemployment claims continue to be, even as hiring has been slowing down. (Ideally, reporters should just relay the facts and leave the theorizing out of their stories, but that ship has sadly long since sailed.)

Crutsinger exhibited no real curiosity because a Democrat is in the White House. Therefore, it's left to New Media to at least get the alternative ideas out there; a contributor at the contrarian blog Zero Hedge did that several days ago. After the jump, readers will find most of Crutsinger's report covering the Department of Labor's initial claims release today, and a healthly chunk of the just-mentioned Zero Hedge analysis.

AP's Rugaber Fails to Note 21,000 Jobs Lost in Government's State Jobs Report
By Tom Blumer | October 21, 2015 | 6:55 PM EDT

On October 2, the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that U.S. payroll employment increased in September by a seasonally adjusted 142,000 jobs. That was disappointing enough, but then the BLS's regional and state report for September released on Tuesday showed a combined total of 21,000 jobs lost in all 50 states and DC.

In his coverage of the state report, the Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber didn't report this wide variance, even though the monthly national vs. total state difference is usually much smaller. The closest he got was reporting that more states lost jobs than gained them, which should have piqued his curiosity about how that result could happen when the nation somehow gained as many jobs as it did during the month, but apparently didn't (bolds are mine):

The Onion: ‘Planned Parenthood Has Enough Fetus Cash to Keep Going’
By Erin Aitcheson | October 21, 2015 | 3:02 PM EDT

Some things hit a little too close to home—especially if you’re a humorless liberal who doesn’t get satire unless it’s aimed at conservatives.

That being said, yesterday The Onion came out with the headline ‘Defunded Planned Parenthood Reassures Supporters It Has Enough Fetus Cash To Keep Going’ in light of Texas barring Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood. 

Hillary 'Faking a Southern Drawl' Again; Press Won't Question Her Genuineness
By Tom Blumer | October 20, 2015 | 5:56 PM EDT

Hillary Clinton was in Alabama a few days ago. As she has in the past at least two other times when south of the Mason-Dixon line, she decided that she could drop the letter "g" from several of her "i-n-g" words while affecting a sort-of Southern accent.

This time she was in Alabama. Mrs. Clinton cut the "g" from the at least the following words she has no trouble fully pronouncing when she's in other areas of the country: having ("havin'"), saying ("sayin'"), working ("workin'") and saving ("savin'"). She also bizarrely put the accent in the words "recession" and "depression" on the first syllable. No one in the establishment press appears to care about this apparent region-based condescension, though to be fair the video involved (but no related story I could find covering what she said in it) is from the Associated Press.

MSNBC.com Hypes 'Little Girl' Offering to Campaign for Hillary
By Ken Shepherd | October 20, 2015 | 4:35 PM EDT

Leave it to MSNBC.com to dutifully act as Hillary Clinton campaign stenographers. That's precisely what weriter Nicole Brown did Tuesday afternoon with her story "Hillary Clinton receives letter from 'little feminist.'"

Press Mostly Ignores Hillary's Praise of Australia's De Facto Gun Confiscation
By Tom Blumer | October 17, 2015 | 11:21 PM EDT

The establishment press is mostly ignoring what Hillary Clinton said about gun control at a New Hampshire town hall meeting on Friday morning. Searches on "Clinton Australia" (not in quotes), attempting to find her statement that a massive, coercive gun "buyback" such as that seen in the Land Down Under almost 20 years ago "would be worth considering doing it on the national level," indicate that the Associated Press has nothing, and that the New York Times web site has nothing. Related Google News results are overwhelmingly from center-right blogs and outlets.

Of the two exceptions I could find as of 10 p.m., one came from CNN. The other was a syndicated story from the New York Times which hadn't yet appeared at the Times's web site. Predictably, both are "conservatives attack" pieces which cherry-picked the NRA's criticism of Mrs. Clinton's remarks.

Salon Writer: To Get a Gun, You Should Have to Take a Bullet
By Tom Blumer | October 17, 2015 | 8:17 PM EDT

D. Watkins has written at Salon.com for about 1-1/2 years.

In his previous columns, he has shown that he fits right in with the "white privilege and oppression of blacks explains everything" crowd. Friday (HT Twitchy), he went into uncharted territory, seriously suggesting that no American should be able to own a gun until they "know the pain of getting hit" (bolds are mine):

MSNBC Uses Long-Discredited Map Showing 70 Years of 'Palestine' Land Shrinkage
By Tom Blumer | October 17, 2015 | 12:29 PM EDT

Based on a map presented during a recent MSNBC broadcast, I'm left wondring why there's all this hand-wringing over a "two state solution" in the Middle East.

After all, according to that MSNBC map and the host of the program involved, "Palestine" has been around for almost 70 years, existing since 1946 (HT Sooper Mexican at the Right Scoop):

AP Fails to Cite Work Requirement As a Reason for Maine's Food Stamp Enrollment Decline
By Tom Blumer | October 16, 2015 | 10:03 PM EDT

A week ago (late on a Friday afternoon, naturally), the Obama administration released food stamp enrollment figures for July. Despite millions of Americans finding work during the past several years, the data continued a national trend of little to no meaningful decline in enrollment.

Seasonally adjusted Household Survey employment is now 148.8 million, slightly above its prerecession November 2007 peak of 146.6 million. Meanwhile, current food stamp enrollment, at 45.5 million, is far greater than the 2007 average of 26.2 million. There is a small exception to this disturbing situation. It's in Maine, where enrollment has declined by over 20 percent since 2009. Those wondering why didn't find anything resembling a complete answer in a brief Associated Press report Tuesday (presented in full because of its brevity and for fair use and discussion purposes):