Associated Press

It's bad enough the federal government's official budget deficit has topped $1 trillion for the second year in a row, according to the just-released June 2010 Monthly Treasury Statement. But, focusing only on receipts for the moment, a closer look makes it obvious that the situation is even worse than it appears. Don't expect the establishment press to take any interest in the annoying but…

In October 2007, I put up a BizzyBlog post (also cross-posted at the Cleveland Plain Dealer's short-lived Wide Open Blog) about William Garner (pictured at right), the Ohio man who killed five children (three of them and the lone survivor also pictured at right) to cover up a burglary in 1992. At the time, it appeared that Garner's date with the executioner had been indefinitely called off, for…

How do you honor a man who built a $1.3 billion baseball dynasty and revived one of the most iconic American sports franchises? If you're the Associated Press, you whine that he avoided the estate tax. In a July 14 article, the Associated Press bemoaned that Steinbrenner died in a year with a "quirky tax situation" due to the suspended estate tax. The AP complained that the estate tax suspension…

"Where would Jesus drill?"  That sounds almost like it could be the opening of a tree hugger's bad joke, but instead it's the lede in a recent Associated Press story written by John Flesher about a so-called "Green religion movement." Efforts to make environmentalism its own sort of religion have been underway for some time now. But the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has sparked a new push to…

The Israeli commandos who intercepted a flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip on May 31 were cleared of wrongdoing by a military inquiry into the matter. The same panel faulted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for "mistakes that were made in decisions, including some taken at relatively high levels," according to retired Israeli Major General Giora Eiland. While we at NewsBusters have taken Reuters…

One reason to hope that the Big 3 networks continue to muddle through their awful evening news ratings and somehow hang around is that there's an alternative out there that would be much worse. If any of the networks ever considered outsourcing their nightly newscasts to the Associated Press, the likely result could be bad enough to make some long for the (relatively) good old days of Brian,…

I was quite surprised to see the difference in tone between two different Associated Press reports on retail sales Thursday. The earlier article, unbylined and time-stamped at 10:43 a.m. at MSNBC (HT Hot Air), has the headline "Nation’s retailers post tepid June sales" and this subheadline: "Concerns about back-to-school shopping, health of recovery." It is decidedly downbeat. The later AP item…

The Associated Press gave voice to a Repuiblican Congressman today to bemoan what he sees as "poisonous 'demagoguery'" from the usual suspects, including, by the AP's own account, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C., who lost in a primary for the GOP nomination last month, went so far as to claim that heated political rhetoric is "dividing the country into partisan camps that…

Reporting on CNN's firing of Octavia Nasr, AP's David Bauder buried the lede in his 7-paragraph July 8 story. Here's Bauder's fourth paragraph wherein he described the Lebanese cleric that Nasr had praised as "[o]ne of Hezbollah's giants [she] respects a lot" (emphasis mine):Lebanon's Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah died Sunday after a long illness. He was staunchly anti-American and…

At the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog (HT Instapundit), Byron York documents the results of some Lexis Nexis searching: Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program in the New York Times: 0. Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program in the Washington Post: 0. Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on NBC Nightly News: 0. Total words about the NASA…

The first six words (bolded by me) of Deb Riechmann's report from Kabul, Afghanistan for the Associated Press are refreshing: "We are in this to win," Gen. David Petraeus said as he took the reins of an Afghan war effort troubled by waning support, an emboldened enemy, government corruption and a looming commitment to withdraw troops - even with no sign of violence easing. It would have been…

Perhaps it is frustration, as expressed by Anderson Cooper, with the new White House rules inhibiting reports about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that is now causing a big crack in the Mainstream Media wall which until recently mostly avoided direct criticism of the Obama administration response. However that crack has now turned into a flood of surprising criticism coming from formerly friendly…

Those looking for evidence that there is a move afoot in the establishment press to lower the bar for whatever economic accomplishments might be accomplished during the Obama administration will be interested in how the Associated Press's report on the government's June jobs report defined "normal" unemployment. Perhaps it's valid for reporters Jeannine Aversa and Christopher Rugaber to refer to…

At the Associated Press, Kelli Kennedy's Thursday report on fraud and abuse in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which is well done in several aspects, nonetheless significantly understated its losses.The AP dispatch deals with a now-released Government Accountability Office report on the results of investigations in nine states. Here are the first four paragraphs of…