Wire Services/Media Companies

Wishful Thinking? AP Headline Overstates Feb. Job Adds by
March 9th, 2012 8:39 PM
Gosh, how did that happen?
At the Associated Press as of 7:30 p.m., its Top Business stories (saved here for future reference) top headline read: "Strong 3 months of hiring as US adds 277,000 jobs." The headline at the underlying article (saved here) reads the same. Related pics are after the jump.

Did AP and Rugaber, Obsessed With Managing Economic Expectations, Spin
March 9th, 2012 6:48 PM
Yesterday was sort of "Pick on Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press Day." So when I came across a particularly reprehensible report he filed last night whining about the difficulty the economy may face in meeting heightened expectations -- with yet another reference to the wire service's obsession with its relevance to President Obama's approval ratings and reelection -- I let it go.…

Rush Rips AP's Rugaber for 'Intentionally Misleading' in Report on Une
March 8th, 2012 5:24 PM
Earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted the press's ridiculously forgiving coverage of today's reported increase in unemployment claims while concentrating primarily on RTT News's assertion that the unemployment rate should continue to come down as long as weekly claims stay below 400,000. Three years ago, Christopher Rugaber's threshold at the Associated Press, also known to…
More Grading on the Curve: At RTT, Acceptable Weekly Unemployment Clai
March 8th, 2012 10:29 AM
The Department of Labor reported today that initial claims for unemployment benefits increased to 362,000 from an upwardly revised (as usual) 354,000 the previous week. Expectations were for a reading of 351,000 (Business Insider's email) or 352,000 (Bloomberg).
Over at the Associated Press, also known as the Administration's Press, the headlined reaction in its 9:17 a.m. report was: "…

U.S. 'Tent Cities,' Sharp Increase in Homelessness Ignored by Almost E
March 6th, 2012 2:53 PM
Over at the Associated Press in a report with a Tuesday morning time stamp, Christopher Rugaber produced yet another predictable lemonade-from-lemons story about how the economy is allegedly "improving faster than economists had expected. They now foresee slightly stronger growth and hiring than they did two months earlier - trends that would help President Barack Obama's re-election hopes."…

GM Suspends Production of Volt, Blames Media
March 2nd, 2012 7:58 PM
Well, I guess when you think you're going to sell 45,000 cars and you're on track to achieve about 25% of that, something's gotta give.
Something gave today, as Government/General Motors announced a temporary suspension of production of the company's centerpiece of environmental correctness, the Chevy Volt, and the layoff of 1,300 employees. Oh, and as readers will see in the Examiner.com…

Rush Rips Into the AP's 'Outrageous Mendacity' in Coverage of 'Loudmou
March 1st, 2012 4:10 PM
Anyone who saw what the Associated Press wrote when former Bush 43 press secretary Tony Snow died in 2008 (original AP article; related NewsBusters post) knew that the wire service would do what it could to subtly distort Andrew Breitbart's considerable accomplishments in exposing leftist hatred, duplicity, and criminality. The only question was what form(s) it would take.
Not surprisingly,…

Richard Who? AP, NYT, Others Ignore MIT's Lindzen As He 'Pwns' Global
February 28th, 2012 11:19 PM
As is the case with so much that is being reported in other countries about how much of the rest of the world is walking itself back from the extreme statist agenda supposedly necessitated by "climate change," a presentation at the British House of Commons made by MIT Professor Richard Lindzen, whom James Delingpole at the UK Telegraph describes as "one of the world's greatest atmospheric…

More Crud From AP's Crutsinger: Failure to Cite Seasonality in Steep D
February 28th, 2012 3:04 PM
At the Associated Press, covering today's durable goods report from the Census Bureau, Martin Crutsinger wrote that "Orders for durable goods fell 4 percent last month."
No they didn't. They fell by a seasonally adjusted 4%. The raw data before seasonal adjustment says that they fell by over 15%:

Not News: Koch Bros. Hit Back at Laughably False Obama For America Ema
February 26th, 2012 11:43 PM
Imagine if a Republican campaign organization attempted to raise money by going after billionaire Barack Obama fan Warren Buffett by claiming that Buffett is making a lot of money at the pump because of higher gas prices. The press would immediately pounce and say that it's not true, because even though Buffett could be benefiting from the President's cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline, the…

Statist Mindset at AP: Texas Court 'Approves' Idea That Landowners Own
February 26th, 2012 10:20 AM
At the Associated Press on Thursday, reporter Chris Tomlinson clearly took the side of statist environmentalists in covering the Texas Supreme Court's decision recognizing the right of landowners to pump water flowing through their property underground.
Tomlinson's sub-headline said that the court "approved" the idea, and his text claimed that it had "expanded property owner's rights." All…

AP Nonsense on Santorum: 'Misidentified' As Evangelical -- By Time Mag
February 26th, 2012 1:52 AM
An AP report by Rachel Zoll brought to our attention by a NewsBusters tipster headlines a truly weird assertion about GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum ("Santorum benefits from mistaken religious identity"), and submits as evidence an item in a Christian magazine which in turn has its own weird headline ("Catholic Politicians You Thought Were Evangelical").
It turns out that the…

AP's Kravitz Plays 'Let's Pretend the New-Home Market Is Recovering' A
February 25th, 2012 10:59 AM
The Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, and designated drone Derek Kravitz clearly haven't tired of putting smiley-faces on the ongoing, relentlessly awful conditions in the new-home market.
As shown on February 17 (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the number of single-family homes under construction is barely above its all-time low (since records have been kept), while January's…

AP's Boring Borenstein: Gleick's Heartland Doc Theft 'Mirrors' Climate
February 24th, 2012 3:52 PM
On Thursday, over 40 hours after the Pacific Institute's Peter Gleick (pictured here) revealed that he stole documents from the Heartland Institute by posing as one of that organization's board members, Seth Borenstein at the Associated Press finally broke the ice and filed a related three-paragraph "this is boring, you don't need to read it" dispatch. Two hours later, the AP science writer…