Wire Services/Media Companies
AP Item on Tea Party's 'Extremist' Concerns Recycles Racial Slurs Myth
April 15th, 2010 11:38 AM
Soooo predictable, Item 2 (Item 1 from earlier this morning at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog). Reporting from Jefferson City, Missouri, David Lieb of the Associated Press understated the number of people expected to attend rallies through the US ("thousands"), misrepresented a previous March 20 incident involving alleged racial slurs at the U.S. Capitol, and waited until his fourteenth paragraph to…
How AP Feels About Today's Tea Party Gatherings
April 15th, 2010 9:34 AM
This is sooooo predictable. An unbylined Associated Press item on today's Tea Party Express tour wrap-up in Washington uses a word that the wire service almost never (if not absolutely never) applies to truly violent leftist groups. The Google page carrying the AP report also has an interesting lead "Related article." Here's the brief AP item (produced in full for fair use and discussion…
AP Cites 'Dramatic' March Deficit Reduction Due to $115 Billion Non-Ca
April 13th, 2010 2:15 PM
Last May, I wrote a column called "The Federal Deficit Becomes Nearly Indecipherable," pointing to a mid-fiscal year policy shift in how the government handles the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and other bailout efforts:
What Treasury did in April (2009) was to convert the TARP “investments” it began making in October in the country’s financial institutions, General Motors, Chrysler…
Bitter AP Report's Absurd Contention: Stupak Was 'Absolutely' Certain
April 11th, 2010 7:20 PM
Associated Press writer John Flesher seems to be one bitter guy. Flesher, along with whoever (possibly Flesher himself) came up with the headline for his Saturday report on Bart Stupak's decision not to run for re-election in Michigan's 1st Congressional District, tells readers that: Tea Partiers are poor winners. The residents of Stupak's district are federal money-grubbers who can be…
Fantasies: AP's Crutsinger Promotes Many in Item About Delay of Social
April 11th, 2010 8:23 AM
The establishment press has for decades and almost without exception insisted that FDR's sacrosanct legacy of Social Security can go on and on with only minor tweaks, and that if trouble looms, it's way out there in 2040 or so when the "Trust Fund" is depleted. The problem is that during that time the federal government has raided the annual surpluses generated by "Trust Fund" which now consists…
Missing from AP Story on EPA's CAFE Mileage Move-Up: 'General Motors
April 8th, 2010 3:23 PM
One would think that in a story about how a four-year move-up of higher fleet gas mileage requirements being imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would at least look at which manufacturers might be more or less affected by them based on what they currently sell, and how those sales are trending. Well, most readers here don't think like writers at the Associated Press. Heck, in his…
Shhh: Ford’s Worldwide Revenues Top GM’s for Full Year; AP Implies
April 7th, 2010 7:00 PM
Government/General Motors announced today that it lost $4.3 billion during the second half of 2009 (actually from July 10 through the end of the year). A further look at that result will come later after yours truly has time to digest GM's 10K Report to the Securities and Exchange Commission. What stood out even further for me about the announcement was GM's top line, i.e., global revenues. That…
Not News: Brick Thrown Through Marion, OH GOP HQ Window
April 3rd, 2010 11:43 PM
Tuesday, a brick was thrown though a window at the Republican Party's headquarters in Marion, Ohio, 50 miles north of Columbus. It would appear fans of Gateway Pundit would be about the only ones outside the local area who would know this. Virtually no other establishment media outlet has been involved in reporting on this incident. Meanwhile, the fact that a window was broken at Hamilton…
U.S. Media Punt on Muslim Violence in Spanish Mosque-Turned-Church
April 2nd, 2010 5:17 PM
The Associated Press was the only American major media organization (as of 4 pm Eastern on Friday) that picked up on a March 31 altercation in the world-famous Catholic cathedral in Cordoba, Spain (at right, taken from The Builder blog), where over 100 Muslims responded with violence after security guards ordered them to stop praying inside the building, which once served as a mosque. Two of the…
GM Financial Shakeup, a Conflicted Hire, and Delayed Reporting Either
March 30th, 2010 2:22 PM
Yesterday, Government/General Motors announced changes in its financial management team. Chris Liddell, who himself just started at GM in January, brought on a new VP to be involved with its pension investments. More interestingly, he hired a new VP and Treasurer with an interesting background (bold is mine): During his 11 years at Morgan Stanley (head of Industrials Investment Banking), (Daniel…
Chavez Arrests Last Opposition TV Station Owner; Latest Ex. of What F
March 29th, 2010 3:58 PM
Is this what Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd meant when he said (on camera) Venezuelan thug dictator Hugo Chavez (take that, Sean Penn) had begun "to take very seriously the media in his country"- while praising Chavez's "incredible...democratic revolution?" The Associated Press (AP) late Friday night reported "Chavez criticizes US as arrests stir…
Sweetness & Light Rips AP Coverage of Judge's Release of Gitmo Detaine
March 23rd, 2010 2:20 PM
Doing work the Associated Press refused to do -- or more specifically, providing context the AP refused to provide -- Sweetness & Light's indefatigable blogger Steve Gilbert gave readers the back story behind the order by U.S. District Judge James Robertson (pictured at right) to release Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohamedou Ould Salahi. Salahi is said to have, in the words of the wire service's…
ACORN Disbanding; Press Not Handling It Well
March 23rd, 2010 1:16 AM
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has announced that it is disbanding. Though the hard-leftists that formed or were running it are likely to show up in some other venue and perhaps in a successor organization down the road (Update: or perhaps burrow themselves into the government, as NB commenter "Hunter 12" suggests), this is a moment to savor. Two twenty-…
Unreal: AP Cites Teen Intercom Prank As Wal-Mart's 'Latest Minorities
March 20th, 2010 6:09 PM
Following up on a post earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) -- a 16 year-old in southern New Jersey was arrested and charged with "harassment and bias intimidation" for getting onto an area Wal-Mart store's intercom and saying, "Attention, Walmart customers: All black people, leave the store now." Though the company had told the local press Friday evening that it believe that a non-…