AP Map Falsely Claims Electoral College Unfairness to Dems

December 21st, 2016 5:44 PM
In a separate post critiquing Associated Press reporter Stephen Ohlemacher's Monday evening and Tuesday morning dispatches on President-Elect Donald Trump's Electoral College victory, I noted that Ohlemacher gave undue ink and bandwidth to no more than 1,500 to 2,100 protesters in states Trump won who urged Republican electors not to carry out their Constitutional duty. Ohlemacher believed that…

Dubious AP Claim: 'Thousands' of Protesters Tried to Sway GOP Electors

December 21st, 2016 1:01 PM
As one would expect, there is plenty to criticize in Stephen Ohlemacher's Monday evening coverage of Donald Trump's achievement of an Electoral College majority earlier in the day. This post will concentrate on Ohlemacher's questionable counting of "protesters." A separate post looks at a very revealing failure in the wire service story's photo collection, in a graphic showing how the…

AP Claims Social Security System Has 'Money,' Then Admits It Doesn't

August 13th, 2015 11:44 PM
Carrying water for the left as their pet programs implode while pretending to be an objective reporter is a daunting task. The Associated Press's Stephen Ohlemacher was not up to that task Thursday afternoon. Twice, in relatively early paragraphs of his 31-paragraph writeup, the AP reporter claimed that the Social Security system has "money." He then separately quoted a Democratic congressperson…

AP: 25 Percent Tax Increase on Earned Income Would be 'Modest Change'

August 10th, 2015 1:52 PM
Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on August 14, 1935. In anticipation of the New Deal-era program's 80th anniversary, the Associated Press's Stephen Ohlemacher presented as facts several unfortunately widely believed distortions. His worst offense against common sense was an item in his list of "modest changes" which could "save" the actuarially…

AP Buries Judge's IRS Contempt Threat in Final Graphs of Hearing Story

July 31st, 2015 11:11 PM
On Thursday, Curtis Houck at NewsBusters noted how the Big Three networks and the two leading Spanish-language networks ignored the latest developments in the now 813 day-old IRS targeting scandal. As usual, only Fox News covered a congressional hearing on, in Fox's words, "the lack of accountability following the IRS targeting of tea party and other groups" as well as a federal judge's threat "…

Contemptible: AP Story Again Keeps Lois Lerner's Name Out of Headline

May 8th, 2014 2:07 PM
Once again, as it did a month ago in two separate stories, the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, left the name of Lois Lerner, the former IRS official who ran its section on tax-exempt organizations, out of its headline and opening paragraph. This time, for good measure, AP reporter Stephen Ohlemacher didn't reveal Lerner's name until Paragraph 3. Before getting to Ohlemacher'…

AP Keeps Lois Lerner's Name Out of Headline and Opening Paragraph in T

April 9th, 2014 10:34 PM
I suspect that many readers who do their best to keep up with the news at a detailed level have a hard time understanding how many of their friends, acquaintances and neighbors — even many who they know put some effort into keeping up with current events — can be so unaware of many objectively important news developments. There are two answers to that question. One is that the establishment…

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 Headline Claims Social Security Inflation Increase Will Be 'Among L

October 13th, 2013 1:27 PM
There was no annual adjustment to Social Security benefits for inflation during 2010 or 2011. That's because the 2009 increase of 5.8 percent (announced in November 2008, and considered the "2009" increase at this table) was artifically lifted by the $4 per gallon gas prices seen in the summer of 2008, the period used in the annual inflation adjustment calculation. After gas prices came down,…

AP Tries to Impress Readers With IRS's Cooperation, But Docs Provided

September 24th, 2013 11:30 PM
As Brent Bozell at NewsBusters noted earlier today, news of the forced retirement of the IRS's Lois Lerner, the agency's chief orchestrator of the campaign which targeted tea party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny in their applications for not-for-profit status, "was censored by ABC, CBS, and NBC." In what may surprise some, that lack of coverage didn't occur because of the…

Why Media Bias Matters: AP's Ohlemacher Fibs and Obfuscates on Social

September 30th, 2012 8:45 PM
The Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, has been running a series of "Why It Matters" items in the run-up to the presidential election purporting to educate readers about important issues. Reporter Stephen Ohlemacher's contribution to the series concerning Social Security opens with a bald-faced fib, omits the fact that the system's benefit payments and costs have exceed payroll…

AP's Ohlemacher Pretends That Social Security Has 'Funds,' When All It

August 7th, 2012 2:44 PM
The modern equivalent of a broken record, which used to be a common saying about someone who says the same thing over and over, is the "infinite loop" -- "a sequence of instructions in a computer program which loops (i.e., repeats) endlessly." On Social Security, the establishment press has played a false infinite loop for decades, namely that its "trust fund" contains lots of real assets.…

AP's Laughable Spin: Biggest Tax Hike Ever Coming New Year's Day Only

June 12th, 2012 1:02 PM
Here is yet another "fact check" whose sole purpose is to try to invent reasons that an objectively true statement made by a conservative or Republican really isn't. Monday, the Associated Press's Stephen Ohlemacher tried to claim that "Taxmageddon," the $423 billion tax increase which will take effect on January 1 if Congress and President Obama don't act to prevent it, won't really be the…

Bloomberg Business Week Misleads in Headline and Opening in Covering S

April 24th, 2012 12:44 AM
At Bloomberg Business Week, the distortion of what the Social Security system's trustees told the public on Monday began with its headline and opening sentence. The headline: "Social Security Fund to Run Out in '35: Trustees." Any reader would assume that the reference is to the situation with the retirement and disability programs combined, as both are collectively referred to as "Social…