Online Media

First, the good news. The Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger didn't handle his coverage of today's release of May's "Manufacturing and Trade Inventories and Sales" report by the Census Bureau as incompetently as he did the report on wholesale sales and inventories he filed on Friday. Visitors here may recall that the AP reporter referred to a key figure as "inventories" when it really…

The media instinct to trash all that is inspiring and noble was unmistakable in Monday morning's Today report on the new novel (Go Set a Watchman) by Harper Lee, the author of the widely celebrated, best-selling To Kill a Mockingbird, first published in 1960. Debate has raged over whether Lee, who is in very poor health and whose mental competence has been questioned, ever wanted her manuscript…

Here is an object lesson in how the perceptions of low-information voters are shaped to the disadvantage of Republican and conservative candidates. In the daily email I receive from Eonline.com (subscribing to the web site’s missives is a necessary evil), the fifth item listed read: “Scott Walker Announces 2016 Presidential Run.” (Curiously, the web version of that email no longer links to the…

Aamer Madhani at USA Today took the easy way out on Friday in covering the sharp increases in murders in many U.S. cities during the first half of this year. He quoted Milwaukee's police chief bemoaning "absurdly weak" gun laws. He noted that "the increased violence is disproportionately impacting poor and predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods." He found a university prof to…

Apparently nothing is ever the government's fault during the Obama era — even a clear failure by authorities to prevent an alleged mass-murderer from acquiring a gun, and their failure to retrieve it once he obtained it. Earlier today, before it went down the paper's frequently used memory hole, reporter Michael S. Schmidt wrote in his second paragraph that alleged mass murderer Dylann Roof got…

Martin Crutsinger has been a business and economics writer at the Associated Press for over three decades. Certain people in high places apparently hold him in high regard. In early 2014, on his 30th anniversary with the wire service, he is said to have received congratulatory letters from soon-to-be Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, soon-to-be-former chair Ben Bernanke and Obama administration…

Of all the media memes ever attempted, the one blaming Republicans for the fact that now-resigned Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Aruchleta was confirmed is high on the list of the most ridiculous ever. A reasonably close runnerup is the idea that Congress failed "to adequately fund OPM." Matt Balan at NewsBusters covered CNN's ridiculous tweeted claim that "Republicans…

CNN Politics's Twitter account on Friday pointed the finger at congressional Republicans over the now-former director of the Office of Personnel Management's responsibility for the massive hacking there that compromised the personal data of over 22 million people. A post hyped that "Republicans acknowledge to [correspondent] @evanperez they didn't properly vet [Katherine] Archuleta's…

One would think that a presidential candidate falsely claiming that she never was subpoenaed would be bigger news story than people in the opposing party criticizing that candidate after the fact for her obviously false statement. As Tim Graham at NewsBusters noted late this afternoon, that's not the case. This post contains several more examples. At CNN, the network's own Brianna Keilar, who…

As seen in two previous posts at NewsBusters, once the Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber didn't get the job market "nearing full health" he expected and briefly thought he got in Thursday's jobs report, he quickly downgraded it to "painting a mixed picture," and took it further down to "a bleaker picture" about eight hours later. That still left the problem, six years after the recession's…

The Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber had a very bad day on Thursday as he covered the government's June jobs report, but it was all self-inflicted. I noted much of the problem in a NewsBusters post yesterday, citing how the AP economics writer got badly burned while engaging in the wire service's usual practice of analyzing expected and reported economic results instead of concentrating on…

To the abortion absolutists of the left, it isn’t enough that a woman kill off the life inside of her. She then has to be happy about it. Case-in-point, liberal journalist Samantha Allen attacking post-abortion counseling in her recent piece for the Daily Beast.

All the attention given to the decidedly mixed employment report the government issued early Thursday morning and the ongoing debt drama in Greece overshadowed a very disappointing release on factory orders which arrived from the Census Bureau 90 minutes later. In a cursory eight-paragraph report at the Associated Press, Martin Crutsinger relayed the basic bad news, but studiously avoided citing…

In a column at ForeignPolicy.com, a former Obama administration defense official who "served as a counselor to the U.S. defense undersecretary for policy from 2009 to 2011" has asked: "Can Gay Marriage Defeat the Islamic State?" Rosa Brooks, who "is a law professor at Georgetown University," is serious. Her earnestness and deep ignorance are especially troubling, because it's clear that there…