AP: Pope Baptizes Italy's Most Prominent Muslim

March 23rd, 2008 6:58 AM
Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press reports that Muslims are incensed that a prominent Italian Muslim writer with a fondness for Israel became a Christian before Pope Benedict on the Easter vigil. (Magdi Allam's writings were quoted by Michael Ledeen on NRO several years ago.) Jihad Watch has new comments. (Photo from AJCBlog.) To the AP: Italy's most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer…

AP Invents 50-Year-Olds Moving Home Story to Highlight 'Bad Economy

March 22nd, 2008 3:22 PM
A recent AP story about 50-year-olds moving back into their parents homes because the economy is so bad is one of the best examples of taking anecdotal evidence and stretching it into a universal truth that I have seen for a while. Filled with the sadly common "many say" and all based on the tale of one person who moved back home at 52, the AP magically discerned a national trend. This is the…

MSNBC.com Pumps Up Bias, Shows Gas Price 21 Percent Above Average

March 20th, 2008 1:49 PM
It's a common trick the media employ when reporting on "skyrocketing" gas price stories: show photos or B-roll of price marquees that bear prices way above the actual average price.MSNBC.com's front page this morning is no exception, as the screen cap at right shows regular unleaded for $3.979, or 21 percent higher than the national average of $3.27.The article's headline reads, "Rising gas costs…

AP, FNC's Hume Pick Up Hillary's Bosnia Fib; Will Rest of Media Follow

March 20th, 2008 11:58 AM
  On Wednesday, Fox News became the first news network to pick up on the contradiction between claims made by Senator Hillary Clinton about her 1996 trip to Bosnia and the reality reported by journalists at the time. In a speech on Monday, Clinton asserted that “I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran…

AP Rezko Story: No Dem Label for Illinois Gov, Former RNC Treasurer Ta

March 19th, 2008 3:50 PM
Yesterday NewsBusters contributor and MRC News Analysis Division intern Lyndsi Thomas noted the Chicago Tribune leaving out the Democratic Party affiliations of two politicians tied up in the Tony Rezko trial: Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Chicago Alderman Richard Mell, the governor's father-in-law.Now it's the AP's turn in a related story tied to the Rezko trial in "Lawyer testifies he plied…

AP Chief Defends Use of Photos of Flag-Draped Coffins of Deceased U.S

March 19th, 2008 2:02 PM
Some have accused the media of trying to undermine the war effort by swaying public opinion with images of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, but the visuals are justified and important, according to Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley. Curley was the keynote speaker of the Sunshine Week dinner at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on March 18. Curley defended the…

AP Just Noticed 'Iraq War Disappears' From TV

March 17th, 2008 7:30 PM
Apparently, AP's television writer David Bauder just noticed that the Iraq war has been canceled as TV fare lately. Maybe Mr. Bauder should have been reading Newsbusters because our own Rich Noyes noticed how the war had vanished from TV all the way back on Feb. 28th. Of course, Bauder is trying to spin this neglect as mere "fatigue," as if the war were a fad that people have just grown tired…

The AP Style Guide on Defending Barack Obama

March 15th, 2008 11:21 AM
The Associated Press editors tasked in-house "writer" Phillip Elliott to write an article that dispels the "rumors and outright lies" concerning Barack Obama and the perception that Mr. Obama's support of Israel is questionable. The product of that task is what you'd expect from any number of left leaning story tellers in the mainstream media who write about Obama as opposed to journalists,…

AP Hypocritical on Photo Copyrights

March 14th, 2008 10:18 PM
On Monday, the same morning that the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal broke, Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee posted an e-mail from the Associated Press which explained the newswire's policy against blogs using AP photos. The long and short of it: unless you have a license from AP, you're violating copyright to use an AP photo. But today, blogger Jules Crittenden informed me, the AP is…

AP Math: 0.2% Rise is Small, 0.4% Rise is Modest, 0.6% Decline is Plun

March 13th, 2008 9:07 PM
NewsBusters readers are well aware of our contention that the press have adopted the 1992 strategy of making every economic report look like the world is coming to an end, and we'll all be in soup lines next year if the Democrat presidential candidate isn't inaugurated in January.No finer example is available than Thursday's Associated Press article concerning February's very disappointing retail…

Essay: Eliot Spitzer – A Man Without A Party

March 12th, 2008 1:04 PM
Democrats dialing for damsels don't get labeled with the big "D" Changing His MindRonald Reagan often said "I did not leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." For floundering and foundering New York Governor Eliot Spitzer -- a twist on the Gipper's words. Spitzer didn't leave the Democratic Party: the Media just didn't see the need to mention the fact that Spitzer was…

AP Notes GOP Affiliation of Lawmaker Calling Gay Agenda 'Bigger Threat

March 11th, 2008 1:59 PM
We've written at NewsBusters at how reticent the Associated Press is to note the Democratic Party affiliation of controversial or disgraced politicians, the latest of which is New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. But right off the bat the AP yesterday disclosed the party affiliation of an Oklahoma state legislator strongly critical of gay rights activists. OKLAHOMA CITY – A Republican member of the…

Scandal-Ridden 'Hip Hop Mayor' Superdelgate's Dem Power Links

March 11th, 2008 10:12 AM
A few days before Eliot Spitzer went down in flames, a highly-connected Barack Obama*  superdelegate was mired in accusations of corruption, bid-rigging and a dead-stripper sex scandal. Usually the media love to report the downfall of party bigwigs, but not in the case of Detroit's youngest mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Much of the media downplayed the mayor's scandals and did not report his party, let…

AP Ignores Spitzer's Democratic Party Affiliation

March 10th, 2008 2:50 PM
Update (16:50 EDT): Clay Waters of MRC's TimesWatch informs me the 3rd paragraph reference in a NYT article to Spitzer's Democratic Party affiliation has been removed. Only an oblique reference to his party remains in the 15th paragraph, notes Waters. It's the first major political sex scandal of 2008 (aside from Detroit's Kwame Kilpatrick) and it involves a Democrat. So of course the Associated…