Labeling

Following up on an item posted yesterday -- 48 hours after it issued an order to subscribing publications and outlets to "kill" a story it filed on Sunday ("Sen. Paul: Voters want to round up immigrants") claiming that Kentucky Republican Senator Rand "sees voters wanting, quote, 'somebody who wants to round people up, put in camps and send them back to Mexico,'" the story is still present on…

Instead of doing the work they were supposed to be doing last night -- i.e., following their publication's mission statement, which is (or maybe was) to "turn ... reporters (i.e., themselves) loose on the subject we love: national politics" -- Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen spent over 1,800 words whining. Their disingenuous complaint: The Obama administration supposedly has insurmountable…

Republicans, beware "help" from the New York Times. Robert Draper, a contributing writer to the magazine, threw four "far right" and two "extreme" labels into his 6,500-word profile of several young conservatives looking to revamp the Republican Party for the 21 century: "The Late Adopters." The cover introduced the story: "G.O.P. Smartphone – Can young, tech-savvy Republicans overthrow their…

Newly minted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Tea Party politician, is "raising bipartisan hackles" and otherwise being a "bad boy" in the previously collegial U.S. Senate, opined political reporter Jonathan Weisman on the front page of Saturday's New York Times: "Texas Senator Goes on Attack And Raises Bipartisan Hackles." Clearly disturbed about Cruz's treatment of Obama's nominee for defense…

The irony must have been lost on Bill Plante when he reported on Monday's CBS This Morning that President Obama "did golf with Tiger [Woods], but we didn't see a picture of it. They [the Obama administration] don't like to show a picture of the President at leisure doing anything. They see this as propaganda for the Republicans." However, exactly two weeks earlier, on February 4, 2013,…

Liz Sidoti's offering this morning at the Associated Press, which is clearly a serious competitor for Worst AP Item Ever, carries the "column" label. As such, I suppose we're expected to accept the idea that the "analysis" offered is hers alone. But you would think that the self-described "essential global news network" would have enough business judgment to review a reporter's work to make…

On Sunday, 35,000 protestors marched on the Washington Mall urging President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, giving the Washington Post’s Steven Mufson ample space to hype the march.  In the 20 paragraph expose, the Post fails to label the protestors as liberal once and does not include any quotes from supporters of the pipeline, instead choosing to hype their global warming hysteria…

Sunday afternoon, the Associated Press issued a supposedly comprehensive "kill" order to all subscribers relating to an erroneous story claiming that Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told Fox News Sunday's that "he sees voters wanting, quote, 'somebody who wants to round people up, put in camps and send them back to Mexico.'" I'm questioning whether the AP is really interested in making sure the story…

In anticipation of Jesse Jackson Jr.'s indictment on Friday afternoon, Jonathan Allen and John Bresnahan at the Politico seemed all too willing to hand out sympathy cards to Jackson and his wife, both of whom stand to do time in prison for offenses relating to their raid of the congressman's campaign funds. Specifically, the Politico pair wrote: "It’s a story of a Chicago power couple that…

Here's something to keep in mind in the context of the past several years, as well as during the current runup in gas prices: They're more than likely higher than the press's reported "national averages." On Friday, the Associated Press reported the following concerning gas prices: "The national average is $3.64 a gallon, up a cent and a half from Thursday, with the highest prices in…

Anyone who thinks that setting a parody site of PolitiFact would be a good idea should reconsider. The site already parodies what a true fact-checking effort would look like on a nearly daily basis. On Tuesday, the site's Molly Moorhead evaluated Marco Rubio's claim during his State of the Union response speech that spending cuts involved in sequestration were originally the idea of President…

On Friday's Morning Edition, NPR's Cheryl Corley stacked her report on President Obama's gun control push full of left-of-center talking heads. But the one who stood out was Father Michael Pfleger, whom she merely identified as a "social activist". Corley ignored his controversial background, which includes a 2008 defense of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former radical pastor, and threatening…

All three network morning shows on Friday ignored the fact that the ex-San Diego mayor who gambled away an astonishing $1 billion is a Democrat. ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's Today and CBS This Morning covered Maureen O'Connor and explained how she wasted most of the money on video poker. But none of them mentioned the party affiliation of the politician. GMA's Josh Elliott simply related…

Kirsten Powers is definitely liberal, but not blind. Here's her take on President Obama's State of the Union speech last night as expressed in her Wednesday USA Today column, with an added bonus of a delicious potshot at the sycophantic press: "It was so hackish, so devoid of any theme or purpose, that it makes one wonder whether part of Obama just wants to see how bad he can be before his…