Online Media

Despite No Publicly Available Proof, Press Treats Mizzou Feces-Swastika Incident As Fact
By Tom Blumer | November 10, 2015 | 11:48 PM EST

Name the missing word in the following sentence from tonight's Associated Press report on the current situation at the University of Missouri: "On Friday, the now-former chancellor issued an open letter decrying racism after a swastika smeared in feces was found in a campus dormitory." The obviously missing word is "allegedly," as in, "was allegedly found." That word is also missing in sentences found in three separate reports at the New York Times. On October, 24, the Washington Post unskeptically accepted the recounting of the incident in a report shortly after it — ahem, allegedly — occurred.

There's a really big problem here. Sean Davis at The Federalist was unable, after extensive efforts, to locate any evidence that the incident really took place. Additionally, he found that a photograph supposedly representing what was done has been present elsewhere on the Internet for a year.

AP's Crutsinger Treats Increase in Already-Bloated Inventories As Positive
By Tom Blumer | November 10, 2015 | 7:54 PM EST

Today's "I'm just making stuff up on the fly" award nominee is Martin Crutsinger at the Associated Press.

The AP reporter, named by National Review's Kevin Williamson as America's "Worst Economics Writer" in 2013, lived down to his designation in a Tuesday report on the Census Bureau's September Monthly Trade Inventories and Sales release. He described a sales increase which didn't come close to offsetting the previous month's decline as "robust," failed to note that the reported increase in inventories will likely increase third-quarter GDP while perhaps depressing the fourth quarter, and described a "major effort to work down an overhang" in inventories not found in the report he was covering. His most important miss, though, was failing to note that trade inventories remain dangerously bloated.

IBD Fights Back As Politico and MSNBC's Scarborough Smear Its Historically Accurate Polls
By Tom Blumer | November 10, 2015 | 10:23 AM EST

The folks at Investor's Business Daily are more than a little tired of seeing their IBD/TIPP (TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics) polls smeared by establishment press publications and pundits.

No similar torrent of criticism has been directed at other polls which have been horribly inaccurate predictors of actual election outcomes. A large majority of them seriously and oh-so-predictably underestimated support for conservative and center-right candidates and causes in 2014 and 2015.

AP Tweet: Appeals Court Invalidates Obama Move to 'Protect' Millions from Deportation
By Ken Shepherd | November 9, 2015 | 9:33 PM EST

Earlier this evening, a federal appeals court affirmed a district judge's prerogative to block President Obama's executive order deferring action on the deportation of some illegal immigrants. When initially tweeting the breaking news, the Associated Press's Twitter account tweeted the following: "BREAKING: Appeals court rules against Obama's plan to protect about 5 million people from deportation."

MSNBC: 2.7-Degree Celsius Temperature Increase Equals 37 Degrees Fahrenheit
By Tom Blumer | November 9, 2015 | 3:32 PM EST

At the math-challenged mess known as MSNBC, the network's "all new video experience" known as "Shift by MSNBC" tweeted a dire warning: "Latest UN report says humanity will warm the planet by 2.7˚C or roughly 37˚F." Though not revealed in the tweet, this warming will allegedly occur by 2100.

If MSNBC's conversion were true, it would of course mean that the earth as we know it is in dire straits. Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for the ignoramuses at MSNBC, 2.7 degrees Celsius equates to roughly 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit — and even that estimate, based on the track record of computer models which have been predicting the arrival of catastrophic global warming, looks (excuse the expression) cooked.

ABC Report: Fiorina's Factual Assertion That Planned Parenthood Is Harvesting Baby Parts Is Only a 'Claim'
By Tom Blumer | November 7, 2015 | 10:42 AM EST

On Friday's The View, as CNS News's Mark Judge reported, Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar went ballistic when GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina stated that Planned Parenthood is "harvesting baby parts through late term abortion." Part of Goldberg's response as she serially talked over Fiorina: "You know that’s not true. Carly, you know no one’s harvesting baby parts." Behar chimed in: "That offends my sensibility to hear you say something like that when you know it’s not true.”

Fiorina was and remains indisputably correct, while Goldberg and Behar are both embarrassingly wrong. Yet an ABC report filed at its web site Friday afternoon by Jordyn Phelps would only characterize Fiorina's assertion of an obvious, widely-known fact as a "claim." Beyond that, Phelps characterized the candidate's citation of Planned Parenthood's announced decision to cease taking compensation for harvested body as merely being (in Fiorina's view) "proof of her point."

AP Credited Obamacare When Arizona Co-op's News Was Good, Buried It When It Failed
By Tom Blumer | November 5, 2015 | 11:51 PM EST

Add Arizona's Meritus Health Partners to the growing list of Affordable Care Act co-op failures. The Daily Signal reports that this makes 11 of 23 such state Obamacare co-ops which will have closed their doors by the end of 2015 after three or fewer years in operation.

The Associated Press, which, along with most of the rest of the establishment press, has been playing aggressive defense on behalf of Obamacare since its passage and especially since Barack Obama's reelection in 2012, has no coverage of Meritus's crackup at its main national or "Big Story" site. Beyond that, readers will see after the jump that the AP's local stories about Meritus highlighted its association with ACA/Obamacare when things appeared to be going well, and buried it when they went south.

This Year's Pre-election Polling: As Bad As or Worse Than 2014
By Tom Blumer | November 5, 2015 | 4:04 PM EST

After the November 2014 midterm elections, I wrote that "Despite all of their supposed science, improved methodologies, and sophisticated turnout models, nation’s pollsters have just suffered through their worst midterm elections drubbing in 20 years. The last time they were off this badly was when they woefully underestimated Republican gains in the Newt Gingrich 'Contract with America' midterms of 1994." I also predicted that "If they’re right from now on, it will it only be by accident."

Very few, if any, such "accidents" occurred this year. In key contests, double-digit and worse variances from polled predictions were the norm.

AP Quickly Takes Story on Awful Factory Orders Off 'Top Business News' Page
By Tom Blumer | November 3, 2015 | 5:37 PM EST

As is so often the case with such stories, one can tell how favorable or disappointing a government report on the economy was by whether a story about it is still present at the Associated Press's "Top Business News" page several hours after its release.

Today's news from the Census Bureau on September's factory orders and shipments, released at 10 a.m., was extremely disappointing. Thus, it is utterly unsurprising that Martin Crutsinger's AP story covering that report was not at the "Top Business News" page a mere six hours after its release (it likely came off even earlier, as I didn't check the page until just after 4 p.m.). The AP economics writer's coverage, though bit of an improvement over prior months' efforts, still left important gaping holes.

Salon Flops with Claim Colbert Offered 'Bombshell Endorsement' of #BlackLivesMatter
By Michael McKinney | November 3, 2015 | 4:34 PM EST

Tuesday at Salon.com, Sarah Burris claimed that Stephen Colbert gave a "bombshell endorsement" to Black Lives Matter, when he talked about the “excessive force by police departments across the country.” In reality, Colbert gave a moderate response to the recent controversy. Salon evoked imagery and a message that Colbert never addressed in the segment. Colbert offered only comedic pandering on the topic, rather than what Salon badly abbreviated to an “endorsement.”

As Final Nail in Fact-Based Coffin Appears, 'Truth' Is Well on Its Way to Deserved Box-Office Oblivion
By Tom Blumer | November 3, 2015 | 12:59 AM EST

Truth, the cinematic attempt to make heroes out of the agenda-driven journalists who produced and broadcast the fraudulent 2004 CBS News story about George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service, went into wide distribution this past weekend, with utterly disastrous box-office results.

Readers, in between moments savoring the film's apparent descent into oblivion — though it will almost certainly be revived in left-controlled high school and college classrooms for years to come — really should read William Campenni's writeup at the Daily Signal. It puts the final stake in the heart of any attempt by anyone with an ounce of sense to claim that Dan Rather's and Mary Mapes's 60 Minutes report has any remaining credibility whatsoever. After the jump, let's have some fun looking at the movie's weekend attendance figures.

Wash Post Analysis: Police Justified in Fatal Shootings At Least 95 Pct. of the Time
By Tom Blumer | November 2, 2015 | 10:49 PM EST

On June 30, the Washington Post announced that it would be "compiling a database of every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer in the line of duty in 2015." The Post has been "tracking more than a dozen details about each killing — including the race of the deceased, the circumstances of the shooting, and whether the person was armed."

The paper's work thus far has been a revealing exercise which should be getting far more attention than it is. I believe would be getting the needed attention if the revelations were different. You see, the analysis of fatal shootings thus far shows that, in layman's terms, the overwhelming majority of them were wholly justified (HT to an Investor's Business Daily editorial).