Republicans like Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina seem to "enjoy" it when an abortion clinic is attacked by a crazed gunman because it opens another opportunity for them to attack the liberal media, Hardball host Chris Matthews bizarrely theorized on his November 30 program.
Online Media
By Tom Blumer | November 30, 2015 | 7:46 PM EST
From time to time over the past nine years, I have written about "globaloney," a shorthand term for the pseudo-science behind “climate change,” and “globalarmism” to describe the enviro-hysteria over "global warming" and the misguided public-policy prescriptions arising from that hysteria. Since the Paris climate talks have just begun, the press hysteria has reached a fever pitch.
At the Associated Press on Sunday, Seth Borenstein, swept up in that hysteria, wrote up a perfect example of "news" coverage embodying the essence of each term. We should be forever grateful that longtime skeptic Christopher Monckton, at the Watts Up With That blog, picked Borenstein apart, utterly destroying the AP reporter's work, piece by piece.
By Matthew Balan | November 30, 2015 | 4:19 PM EST
The media has been carrying water for pro-abortion activists since the Friday shooting at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado in trying to hold the pro-life movement/conservatives, along with the Republican Party, responsible for the murders for their "fierce criticism" of the abortionist organization. However, a more recent incident of threatened violence leads one to wonder if the press will advance the same narrative with Black Lives Matter and other "racial justice" activists.
By Tom Blumer | November 30, 2015 | 12:23 PM EST
In predictably disingenuous fashion, the Associated Press claimed in a November 18 story that "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has shined new light on the breakdown of a potentially history-altering round of 2008 peace talks." Abbas acknowledged that Israel offered Palestinians 93.5 percent of the West Bank and other significant concessions.
The "light" isn't "new" at all. The wire service had the news almost seven years ago, and, according to former AP reporters, refused to publish it. An AP reporter who "discovered the Israeli peace offer in early 2009, got it confirmed on the record and brought it" to the AP in Jerusalem has substantiated the assertion that it "suppressed a world-changing story for no acceptable reason." It is perhaps the most damming validation yet that prudent people should never trust establishment press reports out of the Middle East — particularly in regards to Israel — because of their "pattern ... of accepting the Palestinian narrative as truth and branding the Israelis as oppressors."
By Matthew Balan | November 30, 2015 | 11:40 AM EST
Eric Bradner touted in a Sunday article on CNN.com that the "Republican presidential contenders condemned" the man who murdered three people at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado, but "largely stood by their fierce criticism of the organization." Bradner played up that "Ben Carson...was the only Republican candidate to call on anti-abortion activists to alter their approach" in the wake of the deadly shooting.
By Tom Blumer | November 29, 2015 | 11:53 PM EST
The Walt Disney Company filed its annual 10-K report with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.
The "getaway day" timing of the filing may not be a coincidence, at least as far as its 80 percent-owned ESPN subsidiary is concerned. That's because the report contains bad news which Disney would surely want to see downplayed. Confirming problems yours truly observed in NewsBusters posts in September and October, Clay Travis at Fox Sports' "Outkick the Coverage" blog observed that annual subscriber revenue at the the sport network's various entities— even before considering likely accompany advertising losses — has declined by about $700 million dollars in the past two years (HT Instapundit; links are in original; bolds are mine):
By Tom Blumer | November 29, 2015 | 10:03 PM EST
As yours truly noted in several posts at my home blog on Wednesday and at NewsBusters on Friday and Saturday, the torrent of pre-Thanksgiving "getaway day" economic data was largely disappointing.
That didn't stop the Associated Press's Chris Rugaber from pushing the "All is well" meme late Wednesday afternoon, declaring, contrary to what anyone's eyes could see, that "the fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain solid," that "Consumers appear relatively confident in the economy," and that "Americans are unleashing pent-up demand for big-ticket items such as homes and cars."
By Tom Blumer | November 28, 2015 | 6:46 PM EST
The truth about this year's Thanksgiving and Black Friday store and online sales is out there. It's just that Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, wasn't interested in clearly revealing all of it.
Instead, the AP economics writer told readers about the dollar amount of this year's and last year's Thursday and Friday store sales, but failed to quantify the increase in online sales. People who don't follow the economy closely likely don't know that an increase in online sales is quite unlikely to offset a decrease in brick-and-mortar store sales. The way Rugaber wrote up his piece ensured that news of the economy's continued malaise will remain elusive for low-information news consumers and, ultimately, low-information voters.
By Tom Blumer | November 28, 2015 | 10:16 AM EST
On Wednesday, the Associated Press's Josh Boak added to the wire service's collection of weak "Getaway Day" business journalism by declaring that new-home sales "recovered in October."
No they didn't. The seasonally adjusted annual rate of 495,000 units reported by the Census Bureau was the fourth-lowest monthly level seen this year, even well below the 521,000 and 545,000 reported in the supposedly unprecedentedly awful winter months of January and February, respectively. Boak also claimed that "Americans recovered much of their appetite for owning new homes this year," even though current levels are at best about 70 percent of what one would expect in a pre-"new normal" healthy market.
By Tom Blumer | November 27, 2015 | 11:24 PM EST
Twenty years of economic growth averaging less than 1 percent have failed to convince Japan's leaders — and apparently its citizens — that Keynesian-style government spending and handouts are not the answer to turning that long-suffering nation's economy around.
So the Shinzo Abe government, fresh from learning that the country is in yet another recession — its fifth since 2008 — is doing more of the same, while counting on press shills around the world like the Associated Press's Elaine Kurtenbach to be gentle in their coverage. Kurtenbach cooperated as expected early Friday morning (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
AP Accentuates and Makes Up Positives, Ignores Most Negatives, in Covering October Durable Goods Report
By Tom Blumer | November 27, 2015 | 7:00 PM EST Ever since the White House changed hands almost seven years ago, press reports on the U.S. economy have annoyingly overaccentuated whatever positives reporters might find (or think they have found), while ignoring glaring negatives and omitting key items.
One example of such biased reporting came from the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger on Wednesday. In covering the Census Bureau's October Durable Goods report, Crutsinger praised its one-month seasonally adjusted increases in new orders and shipments. While that news was welcome, the AP reporter ignored the ugly fact that October's actual (i.e., not seasonally adjusted) year-over-year figure was lower than October 2014, marking the seventh straight month of year-over-year declines. He also didn't address shipments, which have been flat compared to to the same month last year for the past four months, at all.
By Randy Hall | November 27, 2015 | 4:40 PM EST
During his weekly address on Thursday, president Barack Obama followed the motto “Never let a good crisis go to waste” by advancing his intention to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees to America and giving a brief historical lesson regarding the Pilgrims who came to this country almost 400 years ago.
“In 1620, a small band of Pilgrims came to this continent, refugees who had fled persecution and violence in their native land,” the Democratic occupant of the White House began. Even now, “we remember their part in the American story -- and we honor the men and women who helped them in their time of need.”