Not News Outside Connecticut: Every Plan on State's Obamacare Exchange

December 13th, 2013 9:44 PM
Searches on "Connecticut" at the Associated Press's national site and at the Politico indicate that there's plenty of news about the Nutmeg State which the two web sites believe merit national attention. But somehow, the fact that the state's Obamacare exchange, Access Health CT, "had incorrect information online about deductibles and co-insurance impacting all 19 individual health plans from…

For Sochi Olympics, NBC Hires Soviet Union Apologist Who Called Its

December 13th, 2013 9:44 AM
Earlier this week, NBC Sports announced that "Moscow-based TV journalist Vladimir Posner (also frequently spelled "Pozner") will be a correspondent for NBC Olympics’ late-night show with Bob Costas during the Sochi Games." To call Posner's background "problematic" is like saying that Bob Filner, former Democratic Mayor of San Diego, has a bit of a problem with how he treats members of the…

Imagine That: As Obama Denies Its Importance, AP's Ohlemacher Identifi

December 11th, 2013 7:24 PM
Well, it's not perfect, but it's a start — and it's certainly a far cry from what President Obama is now willing to admit. In his report Tuesday on the congressional hearing for John Koskinen, Obama's nominee to be the next IRS Commissioner, Stephen Ohlemacher of the Associated Press wrote that Koskinen "told senators Tuesday he will work to restore public trust in the agency in the wake of…

AP's Report Bemoaning Income Inequality Says You're 'Rich' If You've E

December 10th, 2013 2:14 PM
Monday evening at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, Hope Yen, with the help of lead AP pollster Jennifer Agiesta and three other reporters, tagged 20 percent of Americans as "rich." To do so, she reinvented what it is to be "rich" or "affluent." It apparently has nothing to do with how it is normally defined, i.e., based on current net worth (assets owned minus debts owed…

Ezra Klein Still Won't Call Obama 'Keep Your Plan' Guarantee a Lie, Re

December 9th, 2013 9:01 PM
As a reminder, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein was the founder of the secretive JournoList group late last decade. Their objective was to put left-wing writers, perhaps with input from the Democratic Party itself and certain of its candidates for national office, on the same page in their coverage of the news. That's useful to know, as on Saturday Klein published a column which might as well…

As Feds Say to Stop Using Paper Obamacare Apps, AP Again 'Forgets' Tha

December 7th, 2013 10:47 PM
So it's come to this. During the past week, the Associated Press reported today, "Federal health officials," meaning "the Obama administration," began "urging" (i.e., "telling") counselors and navigators around the country to stop using paper applications for Obamacare coverage, "because of concerns those applications would not be processed in time." It seems that either Team Obama or AP (my…

Wires Report Feds Will Wing It With Subsidy Payments to Insurers, Megy

December 4th, 2013 11:10 AM
On November 19, Henry Chao, deputy chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told a congressional committee that "[W]e still have to build the payment systems to make payments to issuers in January" for those who have enrolled in plans through HealthCare.gov. On Black Friday, while almost no one was paying attention, Alex Nussbaum at Bloomberg News reported…

Time and AP Reviews of HealthCare.gov Act As If Security Isn't Even an

December 3rd, 2013 11:30 PM
How does one do a report on an important commerce-related web site without mentioning serious known security problems which are so bad that respected IT experts warn that it shouldn't be used? Ask Kate Pickert at Time's Swampland blog and Kelli Kennedy at the Associated Press, because that's exactly what they did. Pickert and Kennedy reviewed the new and not much improved HealthCare.gov on…

AP Claims It 'Did Not Sit on' the Iran-US Talks Story; Another Outlet

November 26th, 2013 1:59 PM
In response to several outlets contending with basis that the Associated Press sat on its knowledge that the United States and Iran were conducting secret diplomatic discussions, the AP's Paul Colford has published a "Back Story" item defending its conduct, claiming that it could not "confirm, to its standards, what had happened." My related NewsBusters post is here. Breitbart had a related…

AP Touts Retail Group's Projected Nov.-Dec. Spending Increase, Ignores

November 26th, 2013 10:10 AM
On October 3, the National Retail Federation projected that "sales in the months of November and December" will "marginally increase 3.9 percent to $602.1 billion, over 2012’s actual 3.5 percent holiday season sales growth." But on October 16, it warned that "the average holiday shopper will spend $737.95 on gifts, décor, greeting cards and more, two percent less than the $752.24 they actually…

On Fox News Sunday, AP's Julie Pace Revels in Sitting on 'Secret Iran

November 25th, 2013 11:39 PM

On Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace yesterday (full video here), the Associated Press’s Julie Pace twice demonstrated why hanging the “Administration’s Press” moniker on the self-described “essential global news network” is more than justified. My previous post (at BizzyBlog; at NewsBusters) dealt with Pace's blind acceptance of unsupported assertions about the reason for the Obama…

On Fox News Sunday, AP's Julie Pace Makes Excuses For HealthCare.gov a

November 25th, 2013 8:54 PM
On Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace yesterday (full video here), the Associated Press's Julie Pace twice demonstrated why hanging the "Administration's Press" moniker on the self-described "essential global news network" is more than justified. One of the two sequences involved the Obama administration's announcement that it will delay Obamacare enrollment for 2015 by 30 days until November…

Not News: Jessica Sanford 'Screwed' by Washington State's Obamacare Ex

November 23rd, 2013 3:20 PM
Anyone out there who still doesn't believe or won't admit that the establishment press is hopelessly biased in favor of the left, particularly the Obama administration, needs to have the establishment press's virtual failure to cover the Jessica Sanford story rubbed in their faces. Ms. Sanford is the unfortunate victim of deception by Washington state's Obamacare exchange. When it was thought…

Journalists, Networks Decry Obama White House's 'Troubling Precedent

November 21st, 2013 4:03 PM
On Thursday, CBS's Sharyl Attkisson reported on Twitter that the White House Correspondents Association, along with "dozens of associations & media outlets", sent a letter of protest to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. Attkisson outlined in subsequent Tweets that the letter blasted the Obama administration for restricting the access of photojournalists at certain presidential events…