Reuters

AP's Crutsinger Acknowledges Likely Q1/15 Contraction; Rugaber Ignores
By Tom Blumer | May 5, 2015 | 8:55 PM EDT

It appears that someone might need to schedule an intervention with the Associated Press's economics writers.

In his dispatch published a half-hour after the government's March release on international trade at 8:30 this morning, the wire service's Martin Crutsinger quoted a normally upbeat economist who was singing the blues about the result's effect on previously reported first-quarter economic growth. Now, he said, the economy "undoubtedly contracted slightly in the first quarter" by an estimated 0.3 percent. But about an hour later, the AP's Christopher Rugaber ignored this assessment — and that of many others — in his writeup covering the 10 a.m. release of the Institute for Supply Management's Non-Manufacuring Index. Don't these guys talk to each other?

Japan's Retail Sales Dive; Press, Pundits Want Even More 'Stimulus'
By Tom Blumer | April 28, 2015 | 12:47 PM EDT

Japan just reported yet another awful retail sales result. Though it far exceeeded predictions of a 7.3 percent fall, the 9.7 percent March 2015 plunge compared to March 2014 doesn't reveal much, as March 2014 saw a splurge at the stores ahead of a steep sales tax increase which took effect on April 1. The really telling figure is the 1.9 percent seasonally adjusted dive compared to February.

Proving once again that they haven't learned, and probably never will, the press and financial commentators are really hoping that the government will respond, after two decades of Keynesian deficit spending and quantitative easing which have given the country slow growth, several recessions and a dispirited populace, with (good heavens) more stimulus.

Reuters Ignores Obama's Venezuela Executive Order About-Face in Covering His Meeting With Maduro
By Tom Blumer | April 12, 2015 | 11:33 AM EDT

A Reuters report published late Saturday evening ("Obama meets Venezuela's Maduro at time of high tensions") is astonishing for what it ignores.

The unbylined report from Panama City opens by referring to how "the United States recently placed sanctions on Venezuela." Indeed, President Barack Obama did just that in an executive order on March 9, stating that he was "declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela." But Reuters completely ignored the fact that Obama told the world this week that he didn't mean it.

Loaded Reuters Poll: Republicans Say Obama a Bigger Threat to USA Than Putin
By Tim Graham | March 31, 2015 | 9:54 PM EDT

Reuters announced its latest poll results on Monday: “Republicans see Obama as more imminent threat than Putin.” Republican views were deemed the most newsworthy ones, because they sound vaguely unpatriotic about the president.

Reporter Roberta Rampton began: “A third of Republicans believe President Barack Obama poses an imminent threat to the United States, outranking concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”
Poll Shows Tumbling Support for Hillary Clinton Among Democrats; Networks Ignore
By Curtis Houck | March 20, 2015 | 12:24 PM EDT

On Thursday night and Friday morning, the major broadcast networks neglected to cover a new poll from Reuters/Ipos showing support for likely Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton slipping among Democrats following the e-mail scandal as a majority of voters expressed support for an independent review of all her e-mails as well as the belief that she hasn’t entirely honest in her responses.

CNN, USA Today Hype Study by Left-Wing Hate Group
By Kristine Marsh | March 11, 2015 | 3:57 PM EDT

How low does left-wing hate-tank Southern Poverty Law Center have to go before the media stop sharing its “studies” as if they had objective merit? 

Even though the activist group uses easily disproven, bogus stats and a “hate map” that has inspired a potential mass murder at the Family Research Council in 2012, the media continue to cite them as a legitimate and neutral source.

AP on Potential GDP Revisions: Heads They Report, Tails They Ignore
By Tom Blumer | February 3, 2015 | 8:34 PM EST

On Friday, the government reported that the nation's economy, as measured in its real gross domestic product, grew at an annual rate of 2.6 percent during last year's final quarter, sharply trailing analysts' consensus predictions ranging from 3.0 percent to 3.6 percent.

As is the case after the first version of every GDP report, economy watchers have been trying to estimate the effect other subsequently released fourth quarter-related government and other data might have on GDP revisions to be reported in late February and late March. Predictably, the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, seems to have decided that it will tell its readers about the ones which seem to point to upward revisions, and that it will ignore those which go in the opposite direction.

Networks Yawn at Possible Terrorist Attack on Americans in Saudi Arabia
By Matthew Balan | January 30, 2015 | 10:08 PM EST

None of the Big Three networks' evening newscasts on Friday covered the shooting of an American citizen in eastern Saudi Arabia earlier in the day. A Friday item by Reuters reported that "a vehicle carrying two U.S. citizens came under fire in the Eastern Province district of al-Ahsa, one of the main centers of Saudi Arabia's minority Shi'ites."

As National Press Mostly Snoozes, Add Seattle to the List of Cities Where Homelessness Is Rising
By Tom Blumer | January 22, 2015 | 11:53 PM EST

A week ago, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, a Democrat, called homelessness in his city and the rest of King County a "full-blown crisis."

Based on the numbers presented in coverage of the area's situation, we can certainly add the Emerald City to the list of areas where homelessness has been on the rise. Odds are that many readers here didn't know that, because the national press hardly ever pays attention to homelessness when a Democrat occupies the White House. Now imagine the firestorm which would erupt if a Republican or conservative proposed the "solution," however allegedly temporary, Murray is advancing (bolds are mine):

U.S. High-Level Absence From Paris March Controversial — Except at AP
By Tom Blumer | January 11, 2015 | 11:59 PM EST

Thus far, the nation's de facto news gatekeepers at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, have utterly failed to address the growing worldwide controversy over the absence of U.S. representation above the ambassador level at Sunday's solidarity march in Paris in the wake of Wednesday's Charlie Hebdo massacre. Crowd estimates for the Paris march range from "hundreds of thousands" to over 1.5 million.

The New York Daily News is calling the absence of a top U.S. leader "a glaring exception," and devoting its entire front page to telling our government that "You Let the World Down." The UK Daily Mail is treating the situation as a snub, also observing that Attorney General Eric Holder "was in Paris for a terrorism summit held on the march's sidelines, but he slipped away and made appearances on four American morning television talk shows just as the incredible rally was starting." But Angela Charlton and Thomas Adamson at the AP, in report carrying a 7:07 p.m. ET time stamp (saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes), apparently found nothing unusual in the U.S. non-presence:

Code Pink Gets Reuters Coverage — For a Protest Group of 20
By Tom Blumer | January 11, 2015 | 10:02 AM EST

The ability of tiny numbers of far-left fringe group demonstrators to get undue press attention virtually any time they want continues to be intensely annoying.

In mid-2007, Barack Obama made closing the prison at Guantanmo Bay a core promise of his 2008 campaign. That was 7-1/2 years ago. Obama has been in office six years. Gitmo is still open. So naturally, the aggrieved professional protesters at Code Pink organized a demonstration against Gitmo remaining active on yesterday's 13th anniversary of the prison's opening — at former Vice President Dick Cheney's house. They got far more ink and bandwidth than they deserved from the press, including Reuters — i.e., far more than nothing.

Dead Baby Headline: 'Two Fetuses Found Beside Road'
By Tim Graham | January 4, 2015 | 8:09 AM EST

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “fetus” as “a human being or animal in the later stages of development before it is born.” So the Los Angeles Times (and other media outlets) are defying the dictionary with “Two fetuses found beside road in Fallbrook.”

Times reporter Tony Perry dropped the F-bomb for a baby repeatedly in this short item (only the sheriff's spokesman was acknowledging birth).