AP Math: 0.6% Rise is 'Feeble', 0.6% Decline is 'Plunge
Want an even clearer picture of how media are intentionally reporting economic data in a way that makes the public feel things are much worse than they are?Consider the different adjectives the good folks at the Associated Press use to describe a 0.6 percent change depending on whether or not it's an increase or a decrease.As reported by NewsBusters two weeks ago, when the Commerce Department…
AP Bashes Hillary's Bosnia Gaffe, Likens it to Gore Inventing the Inte
As NewsBusters has been reporting, media are finally lining up to bash Hillary Clinton for her recent gaffe concerning fictitious sniper fire when she visited Bosnia in 1996.Next to take the gloves off was the Associated Press's Ron Fournier who deliciously likened this misstatement during a presidential campaign to Al Gore implying in 2000 that he invented the Internet.Get yourself a fresh cup…
AP Reporter's Tone and Stats Obscure Housing Market in Possible Recove
Yesterday's Existing Home Sales report for February issued by the National Association of Realtors had better than expected news: On an annualized basis, sales were up. They were expected to go down. Someone interested in getting to the bottom of things would have found that the improvement reported by the NAR may be an early indicator a broader recovery in existing-home unit sales and sales…
AP Joins the Kwame Kilpatrick 'Name That Party' Parade
Here at NewsBusters yesterday, Brent Baker, Ken Shepherd, and Scott Whitlock noted now the TV networks, with rare exception, avoided calling indicted Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick a Democrat. On the print and online side of Old Media, the Associated Press also avoided identifying Kilpatrick's party (HT to an anonymous e-mailer). This follows on the heels of another such example almost a week ago…
AP: Pope Baptizes Italy's Most Prominent Muslim
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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…
