By Tom Blumer | December 28, 2015 | 5:27 PM EST

As I noted in a pre-Christmas post, "The desperation is palpable at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, over how the Christmas shopping season is going."

Desperation has clearly descended into outright deception at the wire service, where an unbylined story claims that spending is up 8 percent, but that the source involved "does not include spending by dollar amounts." As will be shown shortly, this is a clear attempt to make this year's Christmas shopping season look more than twice as good as it was expected to be.

By Tom Blumer | December 23, 2015 | 7:02 PM EST

The desperation is palpable at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, over how the Christmas shopping season is going.

Having appearently learned something contrary to the "consumers will catch up with their spending" we've been hearing from the National Retail Federation and others so far, AP Business Writer Joyce M. Rosenberg shifted gears and decided that consumers are spending less this year on individual gifts because, well, "Cheap is the new chic." Having spoken with one of Rosenburg's sources, readers can be assured that "chic" has absolutely nothing to do with it.

By Tom Blumer | April 6, 2013 | 11:30 PM EDT

After telling the world on Thursday that "Gone are the fears that the economy could fall into another recession," it seems that the Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber needed some help explaining away Friday's weak jobs report from the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The AP had four reporters on Friday evening's coverage, all seemingly in search of a viable excuse for another "unexpectedly" disappointing report: Rugaber, co-author Paul Wiseman, and contributors Jonathan Fahey and Joyce Rosenberg in New York. Several paragraphs from their report follow the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):