Obama Blames Media for Overblowing His Iraq Comments

July 6th, 2008 11:46 AM
Blaming media for their campaign woes didn't work for Bill and Hillary Clinton during the primaries. Will it work for Barack Obama now that the general election is finally under way, or will it look rather unseemly for a candidate that has received kinder treatment from the press than any in history to start pointing fingers at them when he missteps?After all, it wasn't media members that…

ISM Manufacturing Goes into Expansion Mode; AP Changes Subject

July 5th, 2008 1:28 AM
Earlier this week, to avoid "undue" emphasis on how much the situation has been improving in Iraq, the press, in search of bad news, switched its focus to Afghanistan (examples here, here, and here). Kyle Drennen and Warner Todd Huston at NewsBusters noted this on Tuesday. Similarly, Associated Press writer Ellen Simon, confronted with a key report showing economic improvement, decided that it…

AP: 'Is Obama Close to Being Shadowed By Giant Flip-flops

July 4th, 2008 7:04 PM
On Friday, NewsBusters asked, "Will Anti-war Media Turn On Obama If He Flip-flops On Iraq?"A few hours later, we got our first response from Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press.In a piece entitled "Analysis: Obama's Shifts to Center Give GOP Ammo," although Loven did her best to blame the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee's flip-flop problems on "the Republican weapon of choice," she…

Weekend Captionfest

July 4th, 2008 4:00 PM
Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, (D-Illinois), speaks at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in Washington Saturday, June 28, 2008. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

You Read It Here First: FNC Picks Up Spiking of Good News on Iraq

July 3rd, 2008 2:33 AM
FNC's Brit Hume led his Wednesday night “Grapevine” segment by marveling that though “you might have thought it was big news Tuesday when the administration reported to Congress that Iraq had made satisfactory progress on 15 of 18 political benchmarks set by the U.S.,” up from progress on only eight a year earlier, “the Media Research Center says there was not a word about the report on the CBS…

A.P. Uses Quotation Marks for Palestinian 'Terrorist

July 2nd, 2008 1:53 PM
The Associated Press has shown it has difficulty stating just what a terrorist is -- a terrorist. In an article today at MSNBC.com (which may or may not have created/edited the headline) titled "Palestinian 'terrorist' in earth-mover rampage," we see how the term "terrorist" has quotes around it -- which signifies, in this case, the loathsome notion that "one man's terrorist is another's freedom…

How Will Media Report Lowest-Ever 2-Month US Troop Death Toll in Iraq

June 30th, 2008 9:43 AM
With less than 10 hours remaining until the end of June in Iraq at the time of this post, it is clear, barring heavy last-minute casuaties, that May and June will show the lowest two-month total for US troop deaths in the five-year history of our involvement there. How with the media handle the news? Here is the detail (source: icasualties.org):

How Will Print Media's Financial Problems Affect Its Coverage

June 29th, 2008 10:08 PM
The question that is this post's title occurred to me as I read through this report earlier today by Seth Sutel of the Associated Press. I believe the question is important, and that its potential implications are underappreciated. Sutel first summarized the week's financial events in the media business. It wasn't pretty: Even for an industry awash in bad news, the newspaper business went through…

AP Supreme Court Reporter Shamefully Suggests Child Rapist Was Innocen

June 26th, 2008 5:07 AM
By now, you have all heard of Wednesday's Supreme Court decision prohibiting the death penalty in cases of child rape. Having read several articles, the mainstream media's take on the case was mostly informational and understated. And that was to be expected. While the ruling could be considered a victory for civil libertarians, even the press understands that you can't do a victory dance when…

AP's Babington Fears Willie Horton/Helms Attacks on Obama

June 23rd, 2008 7:23 PM
AP political reporter Charles Babington, who recently touted "ample evidence that Obama is something special," is now warning that Obama is bracing against "race-based ads." Recent examples of "racially tinged" TV images like Obama wearing a turban and native Kenyan gear are "harbingers" of conservative 527-group ads to come. Babington then typically recounted the usual liberal-media suspects on…

Near-Despondent AP 'Report' Virtually Begs for Obama Votes

June 22nd, 2008 11:29 AM
UPDATE: Hard to imagine, but it's even worse than originally thought. AP's go-to "historian" is, as Wikipedia shows, a shameless politically active far-leftist (HT Eric at Vocal Minority). _______________________(begin original post) Two Associated Press writers, with the help of accompanying photos at ABCnews.com, have dug down deep and reached a new low in dismal, depressive reporting. You can…

CBSNews.com Yanks Quake/Warming Story, Blames AP; AP: 'It’s not an A

June 20th, 2008 10:33 AM
Could this have been an, "Oops, we messed up" moment for CBSNews.com? On June 18, CBS.com posted a story claiming that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago because of global warming. [see related NB story by D.S. Hube here] The story had no byline, but was attributed to the Associated Press. The story was identical to a June 17…

AP Ignores B-more Mayor's Party Label, Worries Probe May 'Overshadow H

June 19th, 2008 10:39 AM
Charm City has had Republican mayors before, but the last one was Theodore McKeldin, in the mid-1960s. His immediate successor was none other than Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) father, Thomas D'Alesandro III, so for native Marylanders like myself, it's easy to take for granted that the mayor of Baltimore is and ever will be a Democrat, and that mentioning the fact is redundant.But the…

Firestorm: AP Wants $2.50 a Word for 'Web Use Excerpts

June 18th, 2008 9:57 AM
(photoshopped by Michelle Malkin commenter Ugly American) Tim Conneally at Beta News reported this yesterday:The AP's disharmony with bloggers may have only just begun, as the alternative it's now offering to being served with takedown notices involves paying an up-front sum for excerpting online articles -- as few as five words.The pricing scale for excerpting AP content begins at $12.50 for 5-…