AP Holds Car Satisfaction Poll for Over 40 Days, Shabbily Covers Ford
April 22nd, 2010 2:02 PM
GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media, working for its project partner the Associated Press, conducted a poll from March 3-8 about Americans' car preferences and perceptions. The poll's results were released earlier this week, and the wire service's Dan Sewell reported on the results yesterday. Why the 40-day delay? I'll suggest the possibility that the poll was timed in hopes that the detailed…
Differing WSJ v. AP Headlines and Opening Paragraphs on Chrysler's Los
April 21st, 2010 1:05 PM
The Wall Street Journal's headline and reporter Jeff Bennett's opening paragraph concerning Chrysler Corporation's first announcement of financial results since 2007 got right to the key points: Chrysler Reports $4 Billion Loss Since Exiting Bankruptcy Chrysler Group LLC lost nearly $4 billion since exiting bankruptcy last year, but the company reported a first-quarter operating profit this…
In Kilpatrick's Latest Capers, Former Detroit Mayor's Party, Obama Ass
April 21st, 2010 12:22 AM
Just call it "journalism as usual." One thing you can say about the Associated Press's and most of the rest of the establishment media's treatment of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick during the past two-plus years is that they've been almost totally consistent. They pretend not to know or care what political party Kilpatrick represented throughout his political career, and fail to…
After Obsessing Over Enron's Political Friends, Media Mostly Ignore Mu
April 20th, 2010 5:02 PM
President Obama has extensive ties to Goldman Sachs. Yet even given record-breaking financial contributions and sketchy relationships between Goldman executives and Obama officials at the highest level, the mainstream media will not afford Obama the same scrutiny it gave to George W. Bush during the collapse of Enron.Obama's inflation-adjusted $1,007,370.85 in contributions from Goldman employees…
Obama Lied, Jobs Died: AP Report on Economy Out of Twinsburg, OH 'Forg
April 19th, 2010 1:44 PM
On the surface, it's one of the Associated Press's better dispatches from the real world on the state of the economy as people are experiencing it. Datelined in Twinsburg, Ohio, Megan Barr's Monday morning report, "Recession is ending? Some Americans don't buy it," does a good job of mixing macro and micro elements, painting a picture of a struggling town, a non-improving state economy (now…
AP Report Gives Waxman Cover for Cancelled Hearings on Corporate Obama
April 17th, 2010 11:18 PM
Talk about running interference. On Wednesday, Congressman Henry Waxman cancelled hearings, or what Michelle Malkin referred to as "show trials" in her Friday syndicated column, designed to put the spotlight on companies that dared to do what they legally had to do in response to the passage of ObamaCare: tell the public the estimated impact on their bottom lines relating to a specific tax law…
Conservative Journalism 'Troubles' Journalists, According to AP
April 16th, 2010 5:16 PM
Right-wing media outlets are scary. That’s the view of the Associated Press’s John Miller who recently worried about newly formed conservative media outlets that are funded by think tanks to supposedly push their agenda. In the April 13 article, “News Sites Funded By Think Tanks Take Root,” Miller offered a completely one-sided report about how alternative news outlets are funded and failed to…
AP Silent on Motive of Killer Who 'Needed to Take His Family Back to A
April 16th, 2010 1:24 PM
Why is the legacy media so reluctant to note the possibility of a radical Muslim faith leading to violence? On numerous occasions, the mainstream press has refused to note even a potential connection.The latest such example concerns a recent quadruple homicide in Chicago. A Wisconsin man, James Larry, allegedly shot and killed his pregnant wife, his 7-month-old son, and his two nieces. Why? Well…
Media Confusion: Why the Tea Party Protest? Not High Taxes, but Govern
April 16th, 2010 12:58 AM
The media is still having trouble understanding the Tea Party movement and what it is protesting, even though its roots are clear. On Feb. 19, 2009 during CNBC's "Squawk Box," Rick Santelli made his famous rant heard around the world, calling for a so-called tea party-style revolt. And that helped fuel the growth of a Tea Party movement that has resulted in more than 600 protests this April 15…
AP Admits Rep. Heath Shuler Did Not Hear Tea Party Racial Slurs...Afte
April 15th, 2010 6:34 PM
Oops!On the heels of a story a couple of days ago which used Congressman Heath Shuler as a source about how racial slurs were probably hurled at the Washington, D.C. Tea Party on March 20, the Associated Press has been forced to backtrack. Here is how AP writer Jesse Washington used what Heath Shuler supposedly heard to promote the idea of a Tea Party chock full of racists:A fourth Democrat, Rep…
AP Item on Tea Party's 'Extremist' Concerns Recycles Racial Slurs Myth
April 15th, 2010 11:38 AM
Soooo predictable, Item 2 (Item 1 from earlier this morning at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog). Reporting from Jefferson City, Missouri, David Lieb of the Associated Press understated the number of people expected to attend rallies through the US ("thousands"), misrepresented a previous March 20 incident involving alleged racial slurs at the U.S. Capitol, and waited until his fourteenth paragraph to…
AP's Tea Party News Theme: 'Fringe Groups, Extremists, or Infiltrators
April 15th, 2010 11:03 AM
The tea-party headline at the bottom of the screen early this morning on the local D.C. CBS affiliate WUSA said this: "Tea Party Leaders Anxious About Extremists." The same headline graced an Associated Press story this morning. The theme of the day isn't the burdensome growth of government. It's media bias, piled upon media bias, as AP's David Lieb began: Organizers of tax-day tea parties are…
How AP Feels About Today's Tea Party Gatherings
April 15th, 2010 9:34 AM
This is sooooo predictable. An unbylined Associated Press item on today's Tea Party Express tour wrap-up in Washington uses a word that the wire service almost never (if not absolutely never) applies to truly violent leftist groups. The Google page carrying the AP report also has an interesting lead "Related article." Here's the brief AP item (produced in full for fair use and discussion…
AP Cites 'Dramatic' March Deficit Reduction Due to $115 Billion Non-Ca
April 13th, 2010 2:15 PM
Last May, I wrote a column called "The Federal Deficit Becomes Nearly Indecipherable," pointing to a mid-fiscal year policy shift in how the government handles the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and other bailout efforts:
What Treasury did in April (2009) was to convert the TARP “investments” it began making in October in the country’s financial institutions, General Motors, Chrysler…