Wall Street Journal

CNN's Tom Cohen Baffled by the Obama Popularity 'Disconnect,' Holds Real Answers Until the Very End
By Tom Blumer | July 4, 2014 | 8:04 PM EDT

A prominent exhibit explaining why the nation's trust in its media establishment has dropped to precipitous lows would likely include Tom Cohen's Thursday afternoon column at CNN expressing befuddlement over President Barack Obama's unpopularity.

After all, Cohen's headline crows that under Obama we have "more jobs" and "less war" (!), so there's a "disconnect" which must be explained. To give you an idea of how pathetic his attempt is, he managed not to mention any form of the words "immigration," "scandal," or "contraction" (as in, the first-quarter decline in GDP) while pretending to present a complete analysis. Meanwhile, one of CNN's embedded headline links to another story ("Obama to Republicans: 'So sue me'") openly mocks Cohen, doing a better job of explaining the "disconnect" in six words than anything he wrote in his first 37 paragraphs. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post; numbered tags are mine):

NBC/WSJ Poll Cooks Its Common Core Questions, Fabricates Claim of Strong Majority Support
By Tom Blumer | June 19, 2014 | 12:34 PM EDT

Yesterday's NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll garnered a great deal of attention, primarily because of its findings about President Barack Obama, particularly the one showing showing that "54 percent – believe the term-limited president is no longer able to lead the country."

The poll also asked respondents a series of three questions on the Common Core standards which were clearly designed to elicit majority support for them and to then mislead the public into believing that the opposition is a noisy, anti-Obama minority which should be ignored. Stories covering the poll at both NBC and the Wall Street Journal indicated as much.

NBC/WSJ Poll: 54 Percent Say Obama 'Can't Lead, Get the Job Done'; 'Nightly News' Skips Damning Stat
By Ken Shepherd | June 18, 2014 | 8:26 PM EDT

Fifty-four percent of respondents in a brand new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll believe that President Obama "can't lead, get the job done," contrasted with 42 percent who say he can. What's more, a healthy plurality, 41 percent, also answered that "the performance of the Obama administration" has "gotten worse" in the past 12 months. Yet the NBC Nightly News ignored those stunning numbers in its June 18 broadcast. [Anchor Brian Williams additionally failed to tease the poll in his opening preview of the night's stories.]

While chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd did touch on how "57 percent disapprove of the job he's doing on foreign policy," that factoid was buried in a story centered on blaming former Vice President Dick Cheney's with stoking yet another inside-the-Beltway partisan "blame game" over Iraq. You can read the full transcript below the page break (listen to the full segment via mp3 audio here; watch video excerpt below page break):

At the Wall Street Journal, Politico Refugee Epstein Plays the 'Hitler' and 'Holocaust' Cards on David Brat
By Tom Blumer | June 11, 2014 | 2:00 PM EDT

It took less than two hours for leftist media types to imply that voters in VA-07 who ousted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in last night's Republican congressional primary did so partly because of Cantor's Jewish faith. It took less than 12 hours for Politico refugee Reid Epstein, now inexplicably at the Wall Street Journal, to go after Brat with a misleading headline — "David Brat’s Writings: Hitler’s Rise 'Could All Happen Again'" — which was repeated in the opening sentence. Without presenting any evidence, Epstein also claimed that Brat predicted a "second Holocaust."

Uh, Reid: Adolf Hitler died 69 years ago. David Brat, based on what you presented, was talking about the rise of tyrannies like Hitler's (who was predominantly a leftist; what about "nation socialism" doesn't anyone understand?) — or Stalin's, or Mao's, or Ho Chi Minh's, or any number of relatively petty Eastern European tyrants propped up by Moscow during the Cold War. But an apparent desperate need to get a Hitler reference into a headline about a Republican insurgent ruled the day.

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.

Establishment Press Ignores House Vote to Defund Operation Choke Point
By Tom Blumer | June 3, 2014 | 1:27 AM EDT

A month ago, I noted that the establishment press has ignored an especially pernicious program undertaken by Eric Holder's Department of Justice and the Obama administration's regulatory apparatus, namely Operation Choke Point.

On Thursday, a strong 321-87 bipartisan majority of the House passed H.R. 4660, the "Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (of) 2015." Among its provisions: "Sec. 554. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to carry out Operation Choke Point." The final bill's supporters included 204 Republicans and 117 Democrats. The establishment press has ignored the vote. Excerpts from Kelly Riddell's Friday coverage at the Washington Times follows the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Not the Media Narrative: School Lunch Standards A 'Rolling Fiasco' of 'Cuisine Central Planning'
By Tim Graham | May 30, 2014 | 1:29 PM EDT

Friday's Wall Street Journal editorial page highlighted this week's "meal melee" with Michelle Obama and White House chef Sam Kass arguing across the media that anti-"science" Republicans would "devastate" children's health with an opt-out provision from new federal school-lunch mandates. The Journal insisted "The changes were mandated by a 2010 bill that passed with rare bipartisan support, but their implementation by the first lady and Agriculture Department has become a rolling fiasco."

It sounds like the school-lunch version of Obamacare, what the Journal editorial calls "poorly devised...cuisine central planning":

Open Thread: Doctor Shares 'War Stories' from VA, Including Operating Rooms Shut Down at 3 p.m.
By NB Staff | May 29, 2014 | 8:53 AM EDT

The Wall Street Journal published a fascinating op-ed yesterday by Dr. Hal Scherz, a pediatric urological surgeon and medical school instructor who relayed "Doctors' War Stories From VA Hospitals." Scherz noted that, in his experience, "the best thing that a patient in the VA system could hope for was that the services he needed were unavailable" because then he would get outsourced "to doctors in the community, where their problems are promptly addressed."

What's more, Scherz noted, while the dedicated medical staff at VA hospitals try their darndest to cut through red tape to serve the patients, often personally attending to tasks not in their job description, doing so was punished, not rewarded by the bureaucrats who supervise them:

New York Times Complains FAA Regs on Drones Abridge Freedom of Press
By Ken Shepherd | May 7, 2014 | 4:35 PM EDT

So the New York Times has found an onerous, creativity-stifling regulation it abhors. Naturally, they want a carve-out so it still impacts everyone else but, well, journalists and the corporations which hire them.

Jack Nicas of the Wall Street Journal reported today that the New York Times Company is joining other journalistic enterprises like the Associated Press and Tribune Co. in "a joint brief in a high-profile legal case that is testing the FAA's legal authority to regulate drones":

Bitter AP Focuses On Politics and Not Free-Speech Import of Wis. 'John Doe' Ruling
By Tom Blumer | May 7, 2014 | 3:07 PM EDT

In his "analysis" on Tuesday's U.S. District Court ruling which called a halt to "a secret investigation into his 2012 recall campaign and conservative groups that supported" Scott Walker, Wisconsin's Republican Governor, Scott Bauer at the Associated Press basically gave away what the prosecution's agenda really has been all about.

It really hasn't been about cleaning up political campaigns, or whatever other similar tired bromides the Walker-hating left dishes out from time to time. It's been about hurting Walker's reelection effort this fall and punishing him for reforming public-sector collective bargaining in the Badger State. Short of that, it's an attempt to marginalize him as a potential 2016 presidential candidate by smearing him with the "under investigation" and "scandal" tags. Let's start with the opening paragraphs of Bauer's bluster (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Establishment Press Has Virtually Ignored DOJ's Pernicious 'Operation Choke Point' For Over a Year
By Tom Blumer | May 2, 2014 | 11:59 PM EDT

In June 2006, the New York Times, over strident pleas not to from the Bush 43 administration, published details of how counterterrorism officials were "tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry." According to the administration, the program had "helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia." Other outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, which were apparently on the brink of breaking what the Times reported first, also chipped in with their own supplements. The stories received prominent network TV coverage, and reinforced the image of the Bush administration as secretive and far less than transparent.

So the details of how the government was monitoring the operation of the world's financial system to obtain clues to help catch terrorists apparently deserved full exposure. If that's fine, why has the press been barely interested in a far more troubling development, namely Eric Holder's U.S. Department of Justice using pressure on the financial system to conduct "a massive government overreach into private businesses that are operating within the law," which has been going on for at least a year? Welcome to "Operation Choke Point."

NBC vs. WSJ Over Meaning Behind Latest NBC/WSJ Poll
By Jeffrey Meyer | April 30, 2014 | 4:11 PM EDT

Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday April 30, Chuck Todd tried to spin the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that shows half of Americans disapprove of Obama as “Improvement” for the Democrat.

Despite Todd’s desperate attempts to put a rosy picture on Obama’s flailing poll numbers, his analysis differs greatly from the pundits at The Wall Street Journal. James Freeman, assistant editor of WSJ’s editorial page, argues that “A mere 8% of respondents in the new survey say that the Affordable Care Act 'is working well the way it is'.”