At the Associated Press on Christmas Day, reporter Josh Lederman carried out what might as well be his official administration stenographer duties with special aplomb.
Three paragraphs will illustrate how Lederman glossed over realities relating to the 13-year war in Afghanistan and went all gooey over Barack and Michelle Obama's vacation:
In St. Louis County, police have arrested 19 year-old Joshua Williams and charged him (HT Gateway Pundit) with committing "1st degree arson, 2nd degree burglary and misdemeanor theft" at the QuikTrip convenience store in Berkeley, Missouri on Christmas Eve. Williams "has confessed to the crimes."
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch gets today's prize for most absurd headline, as seen after the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):
Just how liberal is fake conservative Stephen Colbert? Politico’s Hadas Gold reports the Democrats are raising money off his retirement from Comedy Central.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is asking people to sign a 'Thank you' card. "After nine great years, the Colbert Report is going off the air," the email reads. "Thank you Stephen Colbert for an amazing ride!"
USA Today’s website is carrying a report that “controversial” and “conservative” columnist George Will is drawing protests after being selected as a commencement speaker at Michigan State University. But the protesters aren’t leftists, they’re “advocates for sexual assault survivors.” They aren’t protesting another speaker, unlabeled “filmmaker Michael Moore.”
Three of the nation's major newspapers downgraded ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber's testimony to the U.S. Senate, keeping it off the front page. The New York Times on Wednesday demoted the story to page A-20.
In an interview with USA Today published on its website Tuesday, former Obama administration Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tried to distance herself from the numerous comments by ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber, but still found a way to sound like Gruber when explaining why Americans oppose the health care law.
Speaking with USA Today’s Susan Page, Sebelius remarked that “[a] lot of Americans have no idea what insurance is about” and “the financial literacy of a lot of people” can be characterized as “very low.”
Apparently someone at USA Today was either mad as all get out and wanted to make sure its readers knew about today's news item relating to a policeman killing a suspect, or that person fell asleep with their finger on the "Send" button.
Yours truly received four emails between 2:36 and 2:37 PM telling me that New York City Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo will not be charged in the death of Eric Garner:
The establishment press's performance in Ferguson has certainly been disgraceful, especially its role in turning one local death into a national obsession.
One element of that buildup involves Shawn Parcells, one of two men hired by the family of Michael Brown, the 18 year-old man who was killed in an altercation with Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in early August, to look into his death. The press, including CNN in a video seen here, has reported much of what Parcells has claimed throughout the case with little if any skepticism, permanently poisoning the well with non-factual and doubt-inducing information feeding the left's insatiable desire for proof of incurable racism in law enforcement and America in general.
In the wake of a House Report from last week concluding that the CIA and military had acted properly, USA Today editor Rem Rieder on Tuesday complained about "all that wasted noise over Benghazi." Rieder sneered, "For the last three years, the right has worked feverishly to turn Benghazi into a major scandal, a cudgel with which to batter President Obama and former secretary of State Hillary Clinton."
USA Today has joined The New York Times in showing their ongoing support for a president who, on Thursday, unilaterally granted amnesty to five million illegal immigrants. In an article entitled “First take: Echoes of Bush in Obama's immigration speech,” reporter Gregory Korte went out of his way to portray Obama’s actions as comparable to George Bush’s call for congressional approval of an immigration bill. While Bush “called on Congress to act,” Obama “dared Congress to act.”
Brett M. Decker is a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors and "consulting director at the White House Writers Group." Early this evening, he effectively did double duty for the paper, both as a columnist and a journalist.
Decker appears to be the first person to report visibly in a national publication that "influential gay rights advocate and top Obama donor" Terry Bean was arrested on Wednesday and "charged with two felony counts of having sex with a minor last year." There were three links to Decker's column at USAT's front page at 7:43, while a story appearing at the site about 20 minutes earlier than Decker's forwarded from KGW-TV in Oregon is absent from its front page. The portion of Decker's discussion of the media double standard follows the jump (HT Instapundit; bolds are mine):
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."
