Ken Sweet

AP's Ken Sweet Plays Stall-Ball, Waits Four Paragraphs to Disclose Size of Historic Chinese Stock Dive
By Tom Blumer | July 27, 2015 | 3:17 PM EDT

Based on how they handled it today, it's pretty obvious that the Associated Press's Ken Sweet and his wire service's headline writers want the lowest possible number of users of their reporting — consumers and subscribing print and broadcast outlets — to know about the mainland Chinese stock market's historically deep 8.5 percent Monday dive.

It took four paragraphs for Sweet to get to the specifics. What preceded it was clearly intended to create an "It's No Big Deal, so you can move on to something else" impression.

AP Writer Dodges Own Question About the State of China's Slowing Economy
By Tom Blumer | June 29, 2015 | 3:12 PM EDT

The world's financial markets had a terrible Monday. The debt crisis in Greece (population: 11 million) has been dominating the headlines and the press's attention, while serious deterioration in China (population: 1.36 billion) is getting short shrift.

It isn't just that the mainland Chinese stock market has broken the bear-market decline threshold of 20 percent in less than three weeks, dropping 21.5 percent from its June 12 peak. Its underlying economy, to the extent that such things can be ascertained in an information-controlled and news-manipulated society, appears to be in serious trouble. Associated Press reporter Ken Sweet, in a Friday Q&A writeup, emulated the worst tendencies of politicians. He posed a question about China's economy, "answered" it with a complete dodge, and pretended that its economy hasn't started slowing yet (bolds are mine throughout this post):

AP Blames '(Good) Weather' For April Decline in Industrial Production
By Tom Blumer | May 15, 2014 | 3:26 PM EDT

It looks like the "weather" excuse the press went to repeatedly to explain weak economic results in December, and January, and February, and March still has life in April. But this time, warm weather (which most of us would find "good," at least in April) is to blame. An early afternoon report (relevant portion saved here in graphic form) on the Dow's 200-point mid-day dip by the Associated Press's Ken Sweet claims that April's reported decline in industrial production was "possibly due to more bad weather" (while this post was prepared, the AP issued a 2:17 p.m. update which still had the "bad weather" excuse.)

That "bad weather" line is odd, because an earlier AP dispatch by Paul Wiseman exclusively about today's production release from the Federal Reserve didn't mention or allude to the weather at all. After the jump, I'll walk readers through Sweet's possible "warm weather was really bad weather (for the economy)" logic and critique Wiseman's longer coverage.