AP Pair on Frank's Retirement: 'Gay Pioneer' With 'Legislative Triumph
Anyone who made the easy prediction that the Associated Press would fail to bring up Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac in its fawning tribute to Barney Frank after his retirement announcement yesterday was correct. Anyone making the easy prediction that the AP would lionize him as a "gay pioneer" was also spot-on.
Also predictably, the wire service's Bob Salsberg and David Espo failed to mention that…
NBC's Savannah Guthrie Ignores Barney Frank's Role in Housing Collapse
In a testy interview on Tuesday's NBC Today, fill-in co-host Savannah Guthrie avoided asking retiring Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank about his role in the collapse of the housing market and yet the liberal Democrat still complained: "You've managed to ask all sort of negative questions.....you're four for four in managing to find a negative approach."
Guthrie began the segment by…
WaPo Offers Not One But Two Puffy Stories on Barney Frank Retirement
The Washington Post responded to yesterday's retirement announcement by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) today with not one but two well-placed positive stories. "Longtime lawmaker brokered critical deals as skilled negotiator," gushed the subheader to Paul Kane's 20-paragraph page A1 article.
"Fearlessly, Frank made his mark," blared the below-the-fold Style section front page article by Robert…
NYT Laugh-Line Headline of the Day: 'Barney Frank, Moderate
New York Times editorial board member, and former Times reporter, David Firestone is filling in for Andrew Rosenthal this week at the paper’s opinion blog The Loyal Opposition. He has apparently been tasked to make Rosenthal seem balanced by comparison, judging by his Monday posting with the laugh-line headline “Barney Frank, Moderate.”
Firestone was paying tribute to liberal Democrat Rep.…
AP's Kravitz Creates False 'Hope,' Commits Flat-Out Falsehood in Oct
This morning, the Census Bureau told us that 25,000 new homes were sold in October, which, after seasonal adjustment, works out to an annual rate of 307,000. This was up from a seasonally adjusted and downwardly revised (from 313,000) 303,000 in September. According to the first sentence of Derek Kravitz's related report at the Associated Press, this constitutes a "hopeful sign," even though…
AP Reporter's Item on Israel Reads Like a Leftist Political Stump Spee
In an item at the Associated Press datelined early Monday morning not labeled as "analysis" or otherwise characterized as the reporter's point of view, the wire service's Amy Teibel went on the attack against current developments in Israeli politics and society in extraordinarily harsh terms, to the point where her report could easily have been mistaken for a leftist's political stump speech…
Networks Ignore Violence at 'Peaceful' Occupy L.A., Play Up 'Party' Vi
The Big Three network morning shows on Monday all reported on the possible showdown between Occupy L.A. protesters and the LAPD. NBC's Today and CBS's Early Show highlighted that the left-leaning demonstrators held a "block party" as they defied law enforcement. All three media outlets also played up the supposedly "peaceful" nature of the protest, while ignoring other media reports of violence…
NYTimes Leaves a Lot Out of Profile of Inflammatory 'Occupy' Instigato
Seattle-based New York Times reporter William Yardley made the front of the Monday Business section with a friendly interview with Kalle Lasn, the catalyst for the Occupy movement and the controversial editor of the Canadian “anticonsumerist” (how about left wing?) magazine Adbusters: “The Branding of the Occupy Movement.”
While crediting Lasn (pictured) for branding the Occupy Wall Street…
Latest Climategate Emails: BBC 'In Cahoots With Climategate Scientists
Imagine if it were discovered that free-market think tanks were caught vetting scripts of Fox News programs, intervening to prevent free-market sceptics from receiving air time, and consulted with the network about how it should alter its programing in a free-market direction. The howls of outrage would be loud, long and unrelenting from other news networks, the wire services, and leading U.S.…
AP's Kuhnhenn Runs Interference for Washington Doing Nothing About Deb
It seems that everyone in Washington believes that there is zero chance of any kind of economic calamity befalling this nation until January 2013, even though the government is on track to stay on self-destructive autopilot until then. I do not understand how or why anyone can be that confident.
Jim Kuhnhenn at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, almost gleefully…
Wesley Smith Notes Pro-Embryonic, Anti-Adult Stem Cell Research Bias i
On November 15 (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I compared how two of the leading wire services, Reuters and the Associated Press, covered the announcement by Geron Corp. of its decision to halt the first government-approved clinical trial involving embryonic stem cells. Reuters fairly noted that "teams working with adult stem cells -- a less ambitious area -- are making good progress." While…
CBS Omits Bill Ayers Context of Obama Clip Used in Romney Ad
CBS's Early Show on Wednesday boosted a claim by Democrats that a recent Mitt Romney ad takes a line from a 2008 speech by then-candidate Barack Obama out of context. However, CBS noted at that time that Obama was using that line to counter a McCain campaign ad which played up the Democrat's association with left-wing terrorist Bill Ayers.
Anchor Erica Hill raised the controversy over the…
AP Writer Can't Even Accurately Relay the Small Number of 'Occupy the
At the Associated Press this afternoon, reporter Ben Nuckols opened his report on the completion of Occupy Wall Street's "Occupy the HIghway" march thusly: "Drenched, blistered and weary, a few dozen Occupy Wall Street protesters arrived Tuesday in the nation's capital after a two-week, 240-mile march from Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan."
Anyone reading Nuckols's opening statement would…
AP Attempting to Rewrite History of Obama's and Dems' Occupy Movement
Give John Nolte a gold star. In a Friday post at BigJournalism.com entitled "Panicked AP Attempts to Memory-Hole Democrats’ #Occupy Endorsements," Nolte latched onto the beginnings of the establishment press's desperate attempt to distance President Obama and the Democratic Party from the rapidly devolving Occupy movement.
The disingenously headlined item Nolte caught, apparently from an…
