Larry Summers's Tax Cut Plea Falls on Deaf Old Media Ears
When Larry Summers suggested in early 2005 that, as paraphrased by Slate's William Saletan, "innate differences between the sexes might help explain why relatively few women become professional scientists or engineers," the outcry was immediate, furious, and went to saturation level virtually overnight. The controversy ultimately led to his resignation a year later as Harvard President. On…
Dishonest Reporter 2007 Awards
Media watchdog website Honest Reporting has awarded their annual Dishonest Reporter Awards. Some of these stories you know and some you don't--probably because they were ignored by the media. Some were even covered here at NewsBusters. The "winners" included Christiane Amanpour for “God's Warriors,” the BBC for covering up an internal investigation into its Mid East reporting, US government…
WaPo Ombudsman Offers Weak Defense on Bilal Hussein Reporting
Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell served up a flimsy excuse to a concerned reader wondering why the Post doesn't have Post staffers reporting on the Bilal Hussein controversy, rather than just running AP wire stories. Hussein worked for AP as a photographer. Blogger Scott Johnson shared the reader's e-mail and Howell's reply, then added that even if one accepts Howell's excuse, there's no…
AP Bookends the Year by Repeating a Kyoto Myth
I suspect that if one looks hard enough, one could catch the Associated Press misstating the history behind the US and the Kyoto Protocol on a nearly monthly basis. As it is, they've surely done it for the second time this year. The first such instance occurred in January (NewsBusters link; BizzyBlog link), when AP writer Jim Krane wrote (third paragraph; bold is mine): But the oil-rich Emirates…
AP's Misleading Headline on CIA Tape Destruction
"CIA tapes destroyed despite court order" blares an Associated Press headline today. But the court order allegedly breached applied to videotapes in possession of the U.S. military of interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, not videos of interrogations held at secret CIA sites in foreign countries.But that's okay, insists AP writer Matt Apuzzo as "Attorneys say that might not matter." But what…
AP's Conflict of Interest on Bilal Hussein
There is one current story in Iraq that has attracted the full attention of the Associated Press, and that is the case of Bilal Hussein, an AP photographer and terrorism suspect. The AP report on Hussein's hearing yesterday leaves out the fact that Hussein was arrested with a known al Qaeda terrorist... one of but many troubling aspects of the news organization's decision to forego objective news…
Hillary Clinton, Swiftboater
The Associated Press is reporting a second Hillary Clinton campaign volunteer has been shown the door for furthering rumors about rival Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) being a "Muslim possibly intent on destroying the United States.":The Clinton campaign has decried the rumors as offensive and outrageous, and last week forced volunteer Jones County coordinator Judy Rose to resign after learning that…
NBC to Air Freedom’s Watch Ads, AP Seems Displeased
Looking to head off even more controversy, NBC announced Saturday that it has reversed its decision to not show ads supporting the troops during the holidays. Yet, that didn't seem to please the Associated Press which in its article concerning this u-turn chose to depict Freedom's Watch as "a group backed by wealthy Republican fundraisers" that is "critical of liberals." Was this the…
