Update: AP Still Won't Acknowledge Both Sides of Wis. Supreme Court Ju
June 26th, 2011 10:29 PM
Given a chance to revise and extend its 9:58 a.m. report (covered this afternoon at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) on the June 13 altercation between Wisconsin Supreme Court Judges David Prosser, Jr. and Ann Walsh Bradley, the Associated Press's 5:29 p.m. version persists in telling its national audience only one side of the story.
Although the fact is that accounts as to who was the aggressor…
AP Goes All Orwell in Covering Obama Apology for MOH Gaffe It Original
June 25th, 2011 10:44 PM
By failing to initially cover a story millions of people nevertheless learned of -- the presidential gaffe noted at NewsBusters by Matt Sheffield, among others, on Thursday morning -- the Associated Press created a bit of a problem for itself. In a speech to soldiers at Fort Drum, President Obama "mistakenly identified a fallen member of that division as another soldier in a completely…
A Tale of Two State Trios, and Their Comparative Press Coverage
June 24th, 2011 5:32 PM
I can't say that I'm up on what every state is doing, but it's hard not to notice contrasts between two trios of states singing decidedly different tunes:
Wisconsin, Ohio and New Jersey, three states with recently elected conservative Republican governors, have either put their budgets to bed, or are on the verge of doing so, by cutting costs and not raising taxes.
Connecticut,…
AP Misleadingly Bemoans Indiana Women 'Left Fending for Themselves' Wi
June 23rd, 2011 1:50 PM
In attempting to make it sound like Planned Parenthood is the only choice in women's healthcare for Medicaid patients in Indiana, the Associated Press's Rick Callahan seems to have missed perhaps the most important point in his article on the defunding of Planned Parenthood in Indiana: Planned Parenthood lost its funding because they are the largest abortion provider in the country, and Indiana…
AP Coverage of Bernanke's 'I Have No Idea' Speech Similarly Clueless
June 23rd, 2011 1:36 AM
When the Associated Press's Paul Wiseman and Martin Crutsinger team up for a report on the economy, there's no limit to the comic potential.
Today, in covering what the folks at Zero Hedge described as "Ben Bernanke's 'I Have No Idea Why The Economy Will Get Better But It Will' Speech" (transcript is at link), the AP pair may have set a new world record for most unused words one would expect…
AP Miscasts NY State Same-Sex Marriage Bill Status, Calls Common Cause
June 21st, 2011 10:00 PM
The headline at Michael Gormley's Associated Press story on the status of New York State's legislation legalizing same-sex marriage ("NY GOP tables gay marriage; showdown looms") does not reflect the bill's status in the legislative process as described in his underlying report.
Additionally, Gormley had either the ignorance or the gall to characterize an official with Common Cause, an…
Another Obamacare 'Twist,' and Another AP Failure to Admit That Almost
June 21st, 2011 4:07 PM
In the run-up to the passage of Obamacare in March 2010, Nancy Pelosi infamously told a friendly audience: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."
Fifteen months later, we still haven't learned everything about a bill which no honest congressperson or senator can claim to have read and fully understood.
Today's "discovery" is that some couples in their early 60s…
AP's Gormley Gripes That 'Old-time Back-room Politics' Has Delayed Sam
June 21st, 2011 10:59 AM
Somehow when I think of "old-time back-room politics" I don't associate it with important debates about the definition of marriage and the safeguarding of religious liberties.
But apparently AP's Michael Gormley does.
Here's how he opened his June 21 story which the Washington Post ran on page A2 (emphasis mine):
AP Headline Claims 'GOP Wants Small' Campaign Map; Story Has No Eviden
June 20th, 2011 10:54 PM
To be fair to the Associated Press's Charles Babington, he may not have written the headline applied to his early analysis ("Obama wants big 2012 campaign map, GOP wants small") of how the presidential electoral map looks. But what he wrote essentially fits the headline, but didn't provide any evidence that the Republican Party is only focusing on winning back the states lost by John McCain in…
AP Rips Obama For Not Acting on 'Gun Safety' (i.e., 'Gun Control'), Wh
June 20th, 2011 10:01 PM
In a late Monday morning report, the Associated Press's Erica Werner wondered why "the White House has yet to take any new steps on gun violence" he supposedly promised in the wake of the January shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
Either Werner or the headline writers at AP are getting extraordinarily impatient, as seen in the headline which follows the jump:
AP's Error-Riddled Report on Taxing Internet Sales Taxes Patience (See
June 19th, 2011 11:52 PM
Update, June 20, 12:30 p.m.: Revised to reflect another AP math error not caught the first time around.
Update 2, June 20, 3:20 p.m.: The AP has issued a correction indicating that lost sales taxes are $23 billion and teachers' salaries which could be paid are 460,000. The contradiction explained below about California's claim that it is failing to collect only $200 million (less than 1% of…
AP's Bauer, Obsessed With 'Polarizing' Law, Actually Understates the P
June 19th, 2011 10:15 PM
Gosh, I would have thought that someone in Wisconsin's or America's labor movement would have caught Scott Bauer's clear June 15 understatement of the net pay hit many unionized public sector workers in the Badger State will be taking as a result of 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, commonly known as the "Budget Repair Bill," once the law's provisions become effective on July 1. That error is in the…
Apparatchik Press: AP Vastly Exaggerates Modest to Non-Existent Improv
June 17th, 2011 11:49 AM
Thursday morning, initial weekly unemployment claims as reported by Uncle Sam's Department of Labor came in at a seasonally adjusted 414,000. It was 16,000 lower than the previous week's upwardly revised (as usual) number, but certainly no indicator in and of itself of meaningful improvement.
The housing industry data really wasn't any better. True, the seasonally adjusted figures from the…
AP Plays Up Democrat Objections to Romney Unemployed Joke, But Barely
June 17th, 2011 7:23 AM
The Associated Press is blatantly proving it’s going to make Campaign 2012 a long, biased slog for Republicans. Just take their news coverage of jokes. On Thursday, Democratic objections to Mitt Romney were front and center in an article titled "Democrats criticize Romney for ‘unemployed’ joke." But on Tuesday, President Obama’s lame joke about no "shovel-ready" jobs was relegated to paragraph…