USA Today

USA Today Initially Fails to Identify 6-2 Majority in Supremes' Mich. Racial Preferences Decision
By Tom Blumer | April 22, 2014 | 12:34 PM EDT

In his story (saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes — and in case it gets edited later today; Update: It did) on the Supreme Court's decision this morning upholding Michigan voters' 2006 approval of a ban on race-, ethnic- and gender-based preferences in university admissions, USA Today's Richard Wolf failed to identify the size of the court majority, which was 6-2. Justice Elena Kagan recused herself because she was previously the U.S. solicitor general before being named to the high court. The court's decision effectively upholds such bans in seven other states.

Additionally, by focusing on Justice Anthony Kennedy as "the man to watch," Wolf initially left many readers with the impression that only five justices, Kennedy and the four others usually describe as "conservative" (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito) made the ruling. The fact is that they were also joined by Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the supposedly reliable "liberals." Excerpts follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):

USA Today Echoes Occupy Wall Street
By Mike Ciandella | April 4, 2014 | 2:57 PM EDT

No need for the “share the wealth” crowd to worry. USA Today is ready to step into the void and stoke class division in the absence of Occupy Wall Street.

On April 4, USA Today profiled “The $100 Million Club,” a group of wealthy corporate CEOs, and contrasted their pay with the US median wage of $40,872 in 2013. A subhead on the print edition complained: “CEOs get richer, workers get left behind.” 

USA Today Reporters Distort, Lament SCOTUS Ruling in Campaign Finance Case
By Ken Shepherd | April 2, 2014 | 2:55 PM EDT

USA Today's Richard Wolf and Fredreka Schouten wasted no time this morning distorting the Supreme Court's April 2 ruling in McCutcheon v. FEC, which essentially holds that a provision of federal law setting an aggregate limit on an individual's campaign contributions violates the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech.

Wolf and Schouten, however, practically endorsed the lament of liberal detractors, opening their story with a loaded lead paragraph that had nothing to do with the merits of the case and followed up by weaving a narrative focused on the "bitter national debate" about campaign finance rather than strictly adhering to the constitutional merits of the Court's ruling. 

'Breaking' News at USAT's Ministry of Propaganda: 'Hillary Gains Respect, Likability for 2016 Bid'
By Tom Blumer | March 4, 2014 | 5:07 PM EST

Shameless shilling for the Demcratic Party's presumptive presidential 2016 nominee appears to have reached an all-time peak.

A USA Today email I received this afternoon (email web link here) breathlessly delivered the following "Breaking" news story readers will see after the jump. Keep in mind that this is not a normal, garden-variety news story. No, this one's "breaking," meaning that we apparently must drop everything and read it because of its immediate importance to anyone who tries to follow the news:

Press Outlets All Over Report on Milk Price Increases While Ignoring Larger Impact of EPA-Dictated Carbon Mandate
By Tom Blumer | February 19, 2014 | 10:37 PM EST

According to a USA Today item carried at ABC News, "Sixty percent of adults can't drink milk." In July 2012, the New York Times ran an item entitled, "Got Milk? You Don't Need It." But the last time I checked, everyone uses electricity to some extent.

I'm bringing up these points because, as a friend showed me earlier today, the establishment press has run stories galore in the past several weeks about increases in the price of milk, but, as I noted a couple of days ago, has paid virtually no attention to coming increases in wholesale electricity costs of up to 80% which are due solely to Environmental Protection Agency regulations requiring the use of unproven and not commercially available "carbon capture" technology.

CBS ‘This Morning’ Challenges Sochi Climate Change Hysteria
By Sean Long | February 13, 2014 | 4:52 PM EST

Climate alarmists really do find the most outlandish evidence possible for global warming. This time, they are pointing to the warm weather in a subtropical region.

Since the Winter Olympics began in Sochi, Russia, broadcast networks have talked extensively about the warm weather in the region, although they have resisted warnings of climate change.

(Video after break)

Predictably, USA Today's Coverage of Nagin's Conviction Omits His Dem Party ID
By Tom Blumer | February 12, 2014 | 4:24 PM EST

Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin was convicted on 20 of 21 counts of corruption and bribery today.

USA Today reporter Rick Jervis did a bit of a profile of Nagin in the course of reporting on the convictions. It included a recounting of his time at the city's helm during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But one thing his 2:39 p.m. report predictably did not include was Nagin's Democratic Party affiliation (bolds are mine):

Anti-Voter ID March Requires Participants Bring Photo ID; Most Media Outlets Omit Hypocrisy
By Tom Blumer | February 9, 2014 | 9:46 PM EST

Leftist protesters trying to portray themselves as mainstream gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina yesterday to protest moves made by the Republican-dominated state government yesterday.

One of protesters' major objections is to a voter-identification law passed last year. That's more than a little ironic, because guess what organizers required march participants to have? That's right: photo identification. Though he waited 13 paragraphs to do so, Gary D. Robertson at the Associated Press, apparently aware that several prominent center-right Internet outlets had already noted the breathtaking hypocrisy (examples here, here, and here), actually told his readers about it; I could not find another establishment press outlet which did. However, Robertson, in classic AP style, cited a Republican critic instead of simply reporting the damning fact (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

Networks Completely Ignore $70 Billion Puerto Rican Debt Crisis
By Sean Long | February 6, 2014 | 9:13 AM EST

With rapidly rising debt and an unprecedented credit downgrade, Puerto Rico is facing a looming default with terrifying implications on American bond markets, though you would never know about it watching broadcast news.

The leading credit rating firm Standard & Poor’s Rating services downgraded Puerto Rican debt to “junk” status on Feb. 5, with further downgrades likely. Despite Puerto Rico having more than three times as much debt as Detroit did before bankruptcy, the broadcast networks paid no attention to this looming crisis in the six months before Feb. 1, 2014.

Puerto Rico, with $70 billion in debt and 14.7 percent unemployment, edges closer to a default. Regardless, ABC, CBS and NBC did not air a single story covering this crisis between Aug. 1, 2013 and Feb. 1, 2014.

The Business Press's Theme After the Markets Plunge Again: The Weather Did It
By Tom Blumer | February 3, 2014 | 11:53 PM EST

After opening the day at about the same level as Friday's close, the three major U.S. stock indices fell by over 2 percent Monday (DJIA, -2.08%; S&P 500, -2.28%; NASDAQ, -2.61%).

About half of the rout took place in the first 30 minutes after the 10:00 a.m. release of two reports, one on manufacturing activity and the other on construction spending. The former, from the Institute for Supply Management, showed that its January Manufacturing Index came in at a mildly expansive 51.3% (any reading over 50% indicates expansion), down by over 5 percentage points from December and missing expectations by 4.7 points. The latter, from the Census Bureau, showed that seasonally adjusted construction activity barely budged in December. The market's decline continued throughout the rest of the day as disappointing news on January car sales rolled in. As will be seen after the jump, inclement January weather got a disproportionate share of the blame in the business press for these really weak results — an explanation which clearly didn't impress the markets.

Press Nearly Mum As VW Displaces GM As World's Number Two Automaker
By Tom Blumer | January 31, 2014 | 4:58 PM EST

In yet another negative milestone for the bailouts that supposedly saved the U.S. auto industry — already a hard-to-handle claim given that Chrysler, one of the two beneficiaries, is now 100% owned by an Italian company — Volkswagen has surpassed General Motors as the world's number two automaker behind Toyota.

The reporting on this development has been quite sparse. It's not news at the Associated Press's national site, even though AP mentions VW in a report on Super Bowl ad and social media strategies. At USA Today, James R. Healey's could easily have inserted the news into his story today on the 65th anniversary of the VW Beetle's first arrival here, and didn't. What follows is an excerpt from Expatica, one of the few publications to note the shakeup in the auto industry hierarchy:

Math-Challenged Cory Booker Wrong on 'Half of All Students Live in Poverty'
By Tom Blumer | January 15, 2014 | 12:58 PM EST

Before anyone seeks to level a criticism for picking on someone's mistake, let's imagine what the press, which is so desperate to pin anything on Ted Cruz that one of its members recently tried to hold him responsible for others' comments on his Facebook page, would do to him if he made the error recently elected New Jersey Senator Cory Booker made two days ago on Twitter — and has yet to correct.

Booker was apparently taken aback when he read a USA Today story about how U.S. students' performance compares to those in Finland. One segment of Oliver Thomas's writeup noted that "in Finland, the child poverty rate is about 5%. In the U.S., the rate is almost five times as high." That prompted an outraged Booker — a graduate of Stanford and Yale Law School, and a Rhodes scholar — to tweet the following (HT Twitchy):