Politico Pair Cry a River of Crocodile Tears Over 'Obama, the Puppet M

February 19th, 2013 10:23 AM
Instead of doing the work they were supposed to be doing last night -- i.e., following their publication's mission statement, which is (or maybe was) to "turn ... reporters (i.e., themselves) loose on the subject we love: national politics" -- Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen spent over 1,800 words whining. Their disingenuous complaint: The Obama administration supposedly has insurmountable…

AP's Sidoti Bemoans 'Collective Obsession With the Trivial' as Its Bus

February 18th, 2013 12:33 PM
Liz Sidoti's offering this morning at the Associated Press, which is clearly a serious competitor for Worst AP Item Ever, carries the "column" label. As such, I suppose we're expected to accept the idea that the "analysis" offered is hers alone. But you would think that the self-described "essential global news network" would have enough business judgment to review a reporter's work to make…

WashPost Runs 20 Paragraph Puff Piece on Keystone Pipeline Protestors

February 18th, 2013 11:47 AM
On Sunday, 35,000 protestors marched on the Washington Mall urging President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, giving the Washington Post’s Steven Mufson ample space to hype the march.  In the 20 paragraph expose, the Post fails to label the protestors as liberal once and does not include any quotes from supporters of the pipeline, instead choosing to hype their global warming hysteria…

The True National Average Gas Price Is Likely Higher Than the Press Is

February 17th, 2013 4:34 PM
Here's something to keep in mind in the context of the past several years, as well as during the current runup in gas prices: They're more than likely higher than the press's reported "national averages." On Friday, the Associated Press reported the following concerning gas prices: "The national average is $3.64 a gallon, up a cent and a half from Thursday, with the highest prices in…

Bloomberg's Exposure of Worried Walmart Emails Stays Mostly in the Bus

February 16th, 2013 8:10 PM
On Friday, Renee Dudley at Bloomberg News exposed the contents of February 12 internal emails revealing that Walmart executives are worried -- very worried -- about sales during the first 10 to 14 days of the its most current fiscal period (mostly likely either the first 10 days of February if the company works with calendar months, or 14 days if it began the second period of the fiscal year on…

WaPo Buries Another Failed Green Energy/Jobs Venture to Page A

February 15th, 2013 6:06 PM
When a news story is too newsworthy to ignore but too embarrassing to the Obama administration to highlight, what's a liberal newspaper editor to do? Why, bury it, of course. That's what Washington Post editors did to Steven Mufson's February 14 story on an inspector general's report finding, surprise, surprise, that taxpayer monies on another Obama-hyped green energy project have gone to waste…

Standard AP Boilerplate (e.g., 'Bush Also Ran Annual Deficits') Reappe

February 12th, 2013 5:35 PM
In all too predictable fashion, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger, in his first and perhaps only report (saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) on January's Monthly Treausry Statment which showed a small surplus, pulled out the old "Bush ran deficits too" bromide to minimize the historically outsized deficits the Obama has overseen. Crutsinger also…

LOL: Ed Schultz Blasts Fox News Host for Being Uncivil

February 8th, 2013 11:35 PM
If beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder, then the host of “The Ed Show” on MSNBC is definitely wearing blinders. During the Wednesday night edition of his program, Schultz attacked Steve Doocy of the morning “Fox and Friends” show for stating that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the subject of a new website that is “showing off this glamorous new face. Face-lift,…

IBD Notes Disturbing and Virtually Unreported Reduction of Retail Hour

February 5th, 2013 12:51 PM
In a Friday editorial, Investor's Business Daily picked up a disturbing downside in the January 2013 jobs report released by the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics earlier that day: More people are working, but they're working fewer hours per week. In certain sectors, including retail, the industry's aggregate hours worked actually shrank compared to January 2012. Memo to Chris Rugaber at…

Economy Lost 2.84 Million Jobs in Jan., Yet Press Pretends Seasonally

February 2nd, 2013 6:38 PM
Following the governmemt's Employment Situation Summary yesterday, two words were noticeably absent at the Associated Press (here, here, and here), Bloomberg, Reuters, CNBC, and the New York Times: "seasonally adjusted." While they told their readers of the number of jobs supposedly added in total (157,000) and in other sectors, the fact remains that in the real world, before seasonal…

Despite Unemployment Rate Increase, AP's Rugaber Describes Friday's Jo

February 2nd, 2013 11:27 AM
Yesterday at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, Christopher Rugaber really wrote that the government's Employment Situation Summary released Friday was "mostly encouraging." The Friday morning dispatch, still present at Yahoo News but which has understandably disappeared from the wire service's national site, stuck with his smiley-faced description even as he noted, "one…

Now That GDP Is Contracting, Bloomberg's Editors Decide That It's 'An

January 31st, 2013 10:17 AM
This is so pathetic and predictable, you could almost set your watch to it. Just ten hours after a government report showed that the economy went into contraction for the first time in three years during 2012's fourth quarter, an item penned "by the editors" at Bloomberg News appeared which scolded us that the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) is an "imperfect measure of progress," and…

Rush Roasts AP As It Ramps Up the Excuse-Making in Report on GDP Cont

January 30th, 2013 10:20 PM
Yesterday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), reacting to a disgracefully biased January 27 report by Andrew Taylor at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, on the "no budget, no pay" provision in debt-ceiling legislation passed by the House, I wrote that "Taylor’s report is historically bad ... Sadly, I believe AP can do much worse during the next several years — and probably will…

AP Finally Acknowledges 1% 4Q12 GDP Estimate For Tomorrow's Government

January 29th, 2013 2:00 PM
In his coverage of the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence report released earlier today, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger conveniently avoided using quote marks when he wrote that "Conference Board economist Lynn Franco said the tax increase was the key reason confidence tumbled in January, making Americans less optimistic about the next six months." That isn't what Franco said.…