San Francisco Chronicle

Press Mostly Fails to Report Union Exemptions in Some Minimum-Wage Laws
By Tom Blumer | July 27, 2015 | 11:52 PM EDT

I guess the slogan of labor has changed from "Look for the union label" to "Look for the union waiver."

The Los Angeles Times published a long front-page story early this morning on an issue some people thought disappeared after its initial exposure two months ago. The issue is whether union workers should be exempt from minimum wage laws, especially the sky-high minimums being enacted in some U.S. cities. To those who have been unaware of the issue up until now and are thinking that all of this must be a joke — it's not. It's just that the press, which not coincidentally has a higher percentage of union members than the private sector as a whole, has barely noted it.

Not News: Coal CEO Decries EPA's 'Political Power Grab of America's Power Grid'
By Tom Blumer | July 25, 2015 | 11:48 PM EDT

In a speech at a Republican Lincoln Day dinner in West Virginia earlier this week, Murray Energy Corp. founder and CEO Robert Murray decried the Obama administration's determination to, as described at the financial news site SNL.com (to be clear, no relation to Saturday Night Live), "bypass the states and their utility commissions, the U.S. Congress and the Constitution in favor of putting the U.S. EPA in charge of the nation's electric grid."

In the establishment press, Murray's speech was only covered in a single snarky paragraph by Darren Goode at the Politico titled "Don't Hold Back Now" — obviously attempting to paint Murray as unreasonable and extreme — and a writeup at the Wheeling (WV) Intelligencer. After all, what does Murray know? He's only the head of the largest company in an industry which is still responsible for fueling 39 percent of America's electrical grid, and the majority of it in many states. Who would want to give him any visibility, as if he has anything valuable to say? Well, I do.

PolitiFact's 'Half True' Evaluation of Fiorina Layoffs Claim Is Utterly False and Dishonest
By Tom Blumer | May 17, 2015 | 11:52 PM EDT

On May 5, PolitiFact's Louis Jacobson kept with the alleged "fact-checking" web site's actual role as pack of leftist hacks by issuing a fundamentally dishonest "Half True" ruling on a statement made by CarlyFiorina.org's cybersquatter. I raise the matter now because the web site's critics, while raising most of the relevant points, haven't gone far enough in tearing apart Jacobson's work.

As his headline states, the cyberquatter "accuses Carly Fiorina of wishing she'd laid off 30,000 employees more quickly" during the Republican presidential candidate's tenure as Hewlett-Packard's CEO which ended a decade ago. The squatter is lying. She didn't make that statement in connection with H-P's layoffs. That should have been the end of it, but Jacobson still pretended that the lie is "Half True" in his evaluation.

USA Headline Roundup: Obama to 'Shield' Illegal Aliens With 'Deportation Relief'
By Tim Graham | November 20, 2014 | 1:52 PM EST

Some of the nation's most influential newspapers sympathetically broke out the euphemisms for Obama as he prepares for unilateral executive action to "shield" some illegal immigrants from the rule of law, which they call "deportation relief." He's "cheered by reform advocates."

Restricting 'Choice': California Dictates That its Employers Cannot Refuse to Cover Elective Abortions
By Tom Blumer | August 31, 2014 | 10:21 AM EDT

This "choice" thing with abortion is really the narrowest of one-way streets.

Seven robed men decided in 1973 that a woman has a "privacy" right to "choose" to take the life of a pre-born baby she is carrying, the God-given right to life of the baby be damned. But the radicals in Jerry Brown's government in the State of California have now mandated that all employers in that state, even those with religious affiliations, do not have a choice as to whether they will cover abortions in their health plans. It's funny, but certainly not in a humorous sense, how certain states' attempts to limit the practice routinely make national news, while this blatantly coercive dictate by California has barely been noticed.

Major Newspaper Editorials Ignore or Praise EPA Controls 90 Percent of Time
By Sean Long | June 3, 2014 | 4:19 PM EDT

When the government pushes to destroy America’s biggest source of energy, you can certainly trust the media to jump on board.

On June 1, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled drastic new limits on carbon emissions, mandating steep emission cuts within 16 years. It’s a move that may cost  hundreds of thousands of jobs each year, but only 13 of the 20 major United States newspapers discussed the issue in editorials. Eleven of those papers actually promoted the new regulations with editorials or official endorsements – from their editorial board.

Journalists Are Angry White Men, Fewer Republicans In Newsrooms Than In...
By Brent Baker | May 14, 2014 | 5:08 AM EDT

Picking up on the new survey of journalists nationwide conducted for the School of Journalism at Indiana University, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders offered two amusing takes on it in her Tuesday column:

> “The profession that dubbed the Republican Party a refuge for ‘angry white men’ is teeming with angry white men.”

Bozell: Nancy Pelosi Washing Feet for Amnesty Is An Abusive Stunt
By Tim Graham | April 20, 2014 | 9:50 AM EDT

Craig Bannister at CNSNews.com reports that the San Francisco Chronicle highlighted how House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi helped an Episcopal bishop in San Francisco wash the feet of two children on Holy Thursday to "honor the dignity and work of immigrants," and push legislation for “an earned pathway to citizenship."

MRC president Brent Bozell was appalled at this political display as an abuse of her putative Catholic faith:

Not News in Calif. Press: Doctors Not Joining Covered California Exchange
By Tom Blumer | December 8, 2013 | 8:50 AM EST

On Friday morning, Richard Pollock at the Washington Examiner (HT Ed Driscoll at PJ Media) broke an important story about the the large number of doctors choosing not to participate in Covered California, the state's Obamacare exchange.

The odds that the agenda-driven press in the formerly Golden State of California was already aware of this problem and chose not to report on it would seem to be pretty high — and they're still ignoring the story, despite its obvious impact on the availability of medical services once Obamacare kicks in on January 1. Excerpts from Pollock's report follow the jump (bolds are mine):

SF Chronicle's Obamacare Advice: 'Working a Bit Less' Can Get You a 'Huge Health Care Subsidy'
By Tom Blumer | October 14, 2013 | 2:10 PM EDT

Kathleen Pender at the San Francisco Chronicle (HT Zombie at PJ Media) had some Obamacare-related financial advice for her readers on Saturday: "Consider reducing your 2014 income by working just a bit less," because doing so could get you a "huge health care subsidy."

This is not news to anyone who has studied Obamacare in detail, and shouldn't be a revelation to anyone in the business press, especially a financial advice columnist like Pender. Among several others, Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation and yours truly sounded the alarm about Obamacare's work-demotivating impact — as well as how it will encourage marital breakups and discourage couples from getting married — in early 2010. I also wrote related columns here and here in late September. Excerpts from Pender's prose follow the jump (bolds are mine):

Editorials on Popes Dominated by Focus on Gays, Women
By Bill Donohue | September 12, 2013 | 12:11 PM EDT

Let’s look at the way the print media reacted to Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis after their first six months as pontiff.
 
We looked at the editorials in 15 of the nation’s largest newspapers to see what they said about the current pope, and his predecessor, after their first six months in office (Pope Francis will celebrate his first six months on September 13).

Media Coverage of Military Hero Being Stripped of Health Insurance Proven False
By Ryan Robertson | February 13, 2013 | 12:57 PM EST

In a careless attempt to get a rise out of their readers, mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post and Esquire Magazine erroneously reported that the Navy SEAL credited with the assassination of Osama bin Laden had been unceremoniously stripped of health insurance following his retirement last September.

The story immediately went viral, thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of Ezra Klein and Sarah Kliff from the Post and their massive followings on Twitter. Former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle Phil Bronstein originally posted an 'exhaustively researched' article about it on Esquire's site. Upon its publication and online distribution however, some readers noticed just how rife with inaccuracies the story was. Former public affairs officer of the Department of Veteran Affairs Brandon Friedman was among them. (H/T - Twitchy)