First Quarter GDP Growth Up Higher Than Originally Thought

May 29th, 2008 10:19 AM
May 27: Paul R. La Monica for CNN Money reporting on Warren Buffett's belief that "we are already in a recession." Notice the lede: NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It's getting harder and harder to deny that the economy is in recession.May 29: The federal government releases an upward revision of the first quarter GDP growth. The ever-pessimistic AP reporter Martin Crutsinger grudgingly admitted that…

Despite Media, Buffett Recession Obsessions, 1Q Growth Revised Up

May 29th, 2008 10:05 AM
Matching predictions from Reuters and Bloomberg, the government's Bureau of Economic Analysis told us this morning that the economy grew at an upwardly-revised annualized rate of 0.9%. As I've said frequently, this is nowhere near acceptable. But it sure as heck isn't a recession.Initial reaction to the news by the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa was unfortunately predictable (bolds are mine…

Lorain (OH) Councilman's Arrest Is a Group 'Name That Party' Failure

May 26th, 2008 8:12 PM
Also see the compare-and-contrast example in the final paragraph. A city councilman in Lorain, Ohio, a city of about 75,000 west of Cleveland, was arrested during a prostitution sting on Friday. Of the six stories I found covering the event (the Google News search is for May 22-26), only one referred to the political party of councilman Dennis Flores, who is a Democrat (scroll down to "Second…

NYT Bashes Bush on Memorial Day, White House Strikes Back

May 26th, 2008 5:31 PM
It's Memorial Day, and the good folks at the New York Times thought it appropriate to not only attack the President's position on a new G.I. Bill, but also to despicably lambaste him for "[h]aving saddled the military with a botched, unwinnable war," and "having squandered soldiers’ lives and failed them in so many ways."On Memorial Day!Thankfully, White House press secretary Dana Perino has…

My Hometown Paper's Lead Memorial Day Article Focuses on Depression

May 26th, 2008 6:47 AM

Presidential Candidates Are Labeled 'Formers' -- Except For One

May 25th, 2008 9:08 AM
Guess Which Party, and What Label? Here are Old Media excerpts relating to recent presidential contenders you might find interesting. First, here's the Associated Press from May 15 (fourth short item at link): The United Steelworkers union endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president Thursday, giving the Illinois senator a powerful advocate in attracting blue-collar voters. The endorsement…

Why the AP Is the Way It Is, and Where It's Going

May 24th, 2008 6:59 PM
Anyone wishing to understand why leftist bias pervades US "mainstream" media reporting will benefit from reading Steve Boriss's May 18 column ("Is the Associated Press Good for America?") at Pajamas Media. Boriss quickly runs down the history, and gets right to the point: The self-described "not-for-profit cooperative" has a history of acting as a monopolist:

The AP Maligns Our Soldiers On Memorial Day Weekend

May 24th, 2008 2:13 PM
It's a happy Memorial Day from the Associated Press as they inform that nation that a few Marines involved themselves in a "shooting spree" in Afghanistan. Yes, the AP makes it seem as if our Marines began "firing indiscriminately at vehicles and civilians" during a March 4th altercation near Nangarhar province. But, a closer read finds a far murkier story and one that seems to say that our…

NYT Ignores its Own Teresa Heinz Kerry Article to Bash Cindy McCain

May 24th, 2008 12:07 PM
Cindy McCain, the wife of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, released a summary of her 2006 income tax return Friday prompting media members to quickly make negative comparisons between what she revealed and what Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) wife disclosed to the public in October 2004.Most notable was the New York Times which in characterizing Teresa Heinz Kerry's 2003 income as being…

Taranto Nails Recession Obsession of AP's Aversa

May 24th, 2008 9:18 AM
..... But Misses Chance to Refute "Jobs Slashed" Claims. It's good to see that someone else is on the case of the recession-obsessed Associated Press, particularly reporter Jeannine Aversa. But even the estimable James Taranto, in his Best of the Web column yesterday, let Aversa's most obvious and repeated error go by without comment. Aversa started out her report yesterday ("When economy…

Report: Minnesota Bridge Collapse Due to State Bureaucratic Blunders

May 21st, 2008 3:15 PM
Bureaucratic bungling by the state of Minnesota had a heavy hand in the fatal Minnesota bridge collapse last summer, according to a new report commissioned by that state's legislature. The Associated Press has the story, but it's not as exciting as the initial "blame Bush" meme the media found so convenient as the tragedy unfolded. (emphasis mine): ST. PAUL - A new report on the Minneapolis…

AP, Bloomberg, and Some Economists Defining Recession Upward

May 19th, 2008 10:23 AM
The business press's recession obsession continues:A couple of weeks ago, in the wake of the initial first-quarter GDP growth reading of 0.6%, Rex Nutting at MarketWatch.com entertained us with the notion that an economy can be in a recession even while there is real, if anemic, economic growth.Today, Jeannine Aversa of the Associated Press, with the help of a number of economists, told us that…

WSJ Writers Note Absence of Recession; AP's Crutsinger Still Holds Out

May 17th, 2008 9:50 PM
Someone forgot to tell the Wall Street Journal's Kelly Evans and Justin Lahart, carried here at the Arizona Republic, that they're supposed to portray the economy in a bad light whenever and wherever possible. I'll get to the pair's report later. That "bad light" directive seems seared into the minds of the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger and his AP colleagues, as they continue to "cling to…

AP: 'There's Ample Evidence that Obama is Something Special

May 17th, 2008 5:16 PM
Catching up with a fawning Associated Press story on Barack Obama from last Saturday, “Obama rises from political obscurity to verge of history,” on Friday the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto ridiculed the sycophant approach taken by the AP's Charles Babington, formerly of the Washington Post. Babington trumpeted in the May 10 dispatch: “There's ample evidence that Obama is something special…