Regional Media

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.

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):

Establishment Press Ignores DNC Chair's Rubio-Nazi Smear
By Tom Blumer | September 27, 2015 | 11:02 PM EDT

The left's strategy for smearing Republicans and conservatives is, from all appearances, to "throw anything and everything out there, not matter how false or outrageous, and see what sticks."

A major reason why this strategy works is that the establishment press ignores bogus leftist smear attempts which should be utterly embarrassing, effectively eliminating the strategy's downside. Take Debbie Wasserman Schultz's Monday press release on 2016 GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio's fundraiser at the home of Dallas businessman Harlan Crow.

TV Feed of Pope's Speech Catches Threat to Throw Shoe at 'His Head'
By Matthew Balan | September 24, 2015 | 4:06 PM EDT

On Thursday, the New York Post, Mediaite, and several other online outlets reported that CNN's live feed of the Pope's address to Congress caught a woman saying off-camera that she wanted to "take my shoe off and throw it at his head" – moments before the pontiff entered the House chamber. The threat was also caught on the audio of MSNBC and Fox News (though on-air personalities were also speaking at the same time), as well as ABC's local Washington, DC affiliate, WJLA.

Press Ignores How Sanders Is the Really Angry Candidate — and Person
By Tom Blumer | September 20, 2015 | 9:55 AM EDT

We've been told for over 20 years — at least since pundits falsely claimed that "angry white men" drove the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994 — that Republicans and conservatives have far more issues with anger than liberals and socialists. In the the 2016 presidential election cycle, current frontrunner Republican Donald Trump and especially his supporters have often been described in media reports as "angry," while the left's candidates and followers have largely avoided that tag.

So it's worth noting that Dan Hill, in a guest column at Reuters, claims that the really angry candidate in this election cycle is none other than socialist Bernie Sanders. What's more, an item published in August at SevenDaysVT.com confirms that Sanders is also a serially angry guy in his daily dealings.

Pictures Tell the Story: NBC Overhyped Anti-Trump Protest As 'Hundreds'
By Tom Blumer | September 16, 2015 | 10:09 AM EDT

The number of protesters present at GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's speech yesterday on board the USS Iowa is in dispute. Those who are claiming that there were "hundreds" of protesters are, from all appearances, greatly exaggerating their numbers.

The Associated Press has been known in the past to overestimate leftist protesters' turnout at such events. AP reporter Steve Peoples was shown to have vastly underestimated the number of supporters at Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan's speech in Oxford three years ago. Despite the clear potential for bias-driven error, Peoples reported that "Dozens of protesters gathered in the parking lot adjacent to the battleship." Several photos taken at the scene support the AP's estimate. NBC News, on the other hand, somehow turned it into a "few hundred."

AP's Linderman Portrays Baltimore Mayor Not Running For Reelection as a Victim
By Tom Blumer | September 13, 2015 | 11:01 PM EDT

Paraphrasing the title of a song Linda Ronstadt made famous, the tune the Associated Press's Juliet Linderman sang Saturday morning in the wake of Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's decision to not to seek reelection was: "Poor, Poor, Pitiful She."

That's right. Rawlings-Blake is a victim who is being "dogged by critics who questioned whether she was fit to lead." Linderman made that portrayal possible by ignoring, as the press has for months, two important things enough Baltimore residents to matter surely remember. The first is that the Mayor admitted to making a conscious decision to allow rioting to occur on the night of Saturday, April 25. The second, publicly exposed by a sheriff from another Maryland county who came to Baltimore hoping to help preserve order, is that she ordered police to stand down, giving rioters free rein to pillage and plunder on Monday, April 27.

Why Is the Press So Quiet About Illinois Lottery Winners Not Getting Paid?
By Tom Blumer | August 31, 2015 | 11:37 PM EDT

Silly me. I really thought that every state's lottery operation was walled off from the rest of its finances. They collect bets, pay out winnings and administrative costs, and turn over the profits to general fund. End of discussion. No muss, no fuss. Right?

In Illinois, based on recent developments, we know that's obviously not the case — leading me to wonder how many other states potentially have the same problem the Land of Lincoln currently has. You see, the state is about to move into the third month of a budget standoff between Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and its Democrat-controlled state legislature. As a result, because the lottery's operations are at least in a legal sense commingled with the rest of the state's finances, its comptroller has been forced to cancel payouts of lottery winnings greater than $25,000. It appears that very few media outlets outside of Illinois are interested in covering this obviously important story. Why?

NY Times Runs Interference As Hillary Bogusly Takes 'Responsibility'
By Tom Blumer | August 26, 2015 | 11:07 PM EDT

I'm sure we all feel better now that Hillary Clinton, as reported by the New York Times late Wednesday afternoon, "took responsibility" for "her decision to use only private email while she was secretary of state."

Well, no — and Times reporter Maggie Haberman should (and probably does) know why that doesn't cut it. Mrs. Clinton still maintained on Wednesday that investigations currently in process "will prove that I never sent, nor received, any email that was marked classified." Information already known shows that contention to be false, and the noise about "markings" is irrelevant in any event.

Arrest of 'Special Assistant to the President' Gets Scant, Poor-Quality Press Coverage
By Tom Blumer | August 12, 2015 | 10:52 AM EDT

My, the news about Barvetta Singletary's domestic violence arrest involving gunfire has been kept mighty quiet.

Press reports have typically opened by describing Ms. Singletary as "a White House staffer." Several paragraphs later, readers learn that she is — or perhaps "was," as she has for now "has been placed on temporary unpaid leave and is banned from White House grounds" — the "special assistant to the president and House legislative affairs liaison." Though it's impossible to be certain given bureaucratic bloat, this would seem to be a position which reports directly to Barack Obama. Even if it isn't, can anyone imagine a similar circumstance generating so little notice during a Republican or conservative presidential administration?

Press Downplays, Hides EPA's Responsibility for Western River Contamination
By Tom Blumer | August 9, 2015 | 10:25 AM EDT

On Wednesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency committed an act which would have likely become instant national news if a private entity had done the same thing.

On Friday, John Merline at Investors' Business Daily succinctly noted that the EPA "dumped a million gallons of mine waste into Animas River in Colorado, turning it into what looked like Tang, forcing the sheriff's office to close the river to recreational users." Oh, and it "also failed to warn officials in downstream New Mexico about the spill." Yet here we are four days later, and the story has gotten very little visibility outside of center-right blogs and outlets. That's largely explained by how the wire services have handled the story. After the jump, readers will see headlines and descriptions of the stories which have appeared thus far at the web site of the New York Times:

Ohio Press Mostly Ignores Black Democrat's Inspiring Pro-Life Speech
By Tom Blumer | July 30, 2015 | 11:46 PM EDT

Ohio's newspapers have reported that two state legislators, one Democrat and one Republican, are cosponsoring a bill to defund Planned Parenthood in the Buckeye State. But they have mostly failed to note the key points made by Cleveland Democrat Bill Patmon in his inspiring, passionate speech at an Ohio Right to Life rally announcing his cosponsorship.

You see, Mr. Patmon is black, and he has had it up to here with the hypocrisy of the "Black Lives Matter" movement, especially in their failure to denounce the disproportionate slaughter in the U.S. of black babies through abortion.