Labeling

Just three months after Arch, the nation's Number 2 coal mining company, filed for bankruptcy, Number 1, Peabody Energy, has followed suit. Five of the industry's largest firms have now gone bankrupt in the past 12 months. Two Associated Press stories on Peabody this week managed to avoid mentioning the name of President Barack Obama, whose hostility toward the industry has been obvious since…

Two writers at the Five Thirty-Eight blog, purchased by ABC's ESPN network two years ago, have done something the crime increase causation deniers will surely detest: demonstrate, based on statistical evidence, and despite their tentative language, that "real changes in the process of policing in Chicago" have led to "spike in gun violence in Chicago since the end of November." Translating the…

Today's report from the government on retail sales was awful — "unexpectedly" so, according to both Bloomberg and Reuters. Following on the heels of a 0.4 percent seasonally adjusted decline in January and a flat February, March sales fell by 0.3 percent. Two of the three main U.S. business wire services blamed the American people, not the worst post-recession economy since World War II during…

Add this to the seemingly endless list of "Imagine what would happen if Republicans or conservatives did the same thing" items. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary "I don't feel no ways tired" Clinton and New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio rolled out a very tired, old and insulting racist stereotype this weekend. The headline at Stephanie Condon's report on the related event at CBS News…

Esquire's Charles Pierce unleashed on Paul Ryan on MSNBC's All In on Monday during a panel discussion on a possible presidential bid by the House speaker: "I think he's as ambitious as Satan. I think he doesn't want to go out in the country where he was already deemed not worthy of the vice presidency, and try to run for president. But if they offer him the crown, he would loathe to lay his hands…

Despite the decay of the left-dominated blue-city model during the past several decades, liberals and the press are not fans of many urban neighborhood improvement efforts. One recent example found at a national media outlet is at Newsweek, where on April 2, Alexander Nazaryan, in an item headlined "WHITE CITY: THE NEW URBAN BLIGHT IS RICH PEOPLE," wrote that "gentrification ... turns cities…

Kurt Eichenwald deemed himself an authority on the Bible and Christianity in a Monday item for Newsweek, as he lectured Mississippi Christians on their new religious liberty law. Eichenwald blasted the "the rogues' parade of Bible-thumpers who know nothing about what the Bible actually says" in the state, and contended that orthodox Christian theologians had gotten it wrong about sexuality and…

On Tuesday, shortly after Governor Jerry Brown signed California's $15-an-hour minimum wage legislation, the Associated Press's Michael R. Blood and Don Thompson called the move "a victory for those struggling on the margins of the economy and the politically powerful unions that pushed it." As seen in a NewsBusters post on March 31, it's definitely a win for union members whose wages are set…

Two weeks ago, yours truly posted on a very inadequate March 26 U.S.-distributed Associated Press story out of Glasgow the previous day (since expired) about the murder of Asad Shah. Despite the fact that far more information was known at the time, the wire service would only acknowledge that "the killing of a Muslim shopkeeper who wished Christians a happy Easter is being investigated as '…

On Friday's The Lead, CNN's Tom Foreman hyped how Hillary Clinton had a "bumpy ride" and a "rough start," as she "opened the door for a lot of first ladies to do a lot of different things." Foreman only vaguely referenced the Whitewater scandal and Vince Foster's suicide as he noted that her role in Bill Clinton's win in 1992 "spurred scrutiny uncommon for a president's spouse — over her ties to…

The transgender CEO of United Therapeutics said the company disapproved of North Carolina’s transgender bathroom law, which CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin described as “anti-LGBT.” Squawk Box host Sorkin asked CEO Martine Rothblatt on April 7, 2016, about the state’s new law restricting transgender access to bathrooms of their choosing. Rothblatt reported that United Therapeutics opposed the law, and…

CNN's Alisyn Camerota repeatedly touted the New York Daily News's lowbrow anti-Ted Cruz headline on Thursday's New Day. The anchor first cracked, "Look at how helpful the Daily News is being, though, for Ted Cruz. They're giving him helpful subway directions about how to get out of the Bronx. They're suggesting that he 'take the F.U. train.'" Camerota then spotlighted it in a segment about the "…

Perhaps this is why the press has been reluctant to cite economists who are predicting that sharp increases in state minimum wages like the $15-per-hour minimums just passed in California and New York will reduce employment: They're with many of their lefty brethren who don't care whether jobs are lost. So they must believe that no one else should care either. At the Washington Post's WonkBlog…