Government Agencies

The Associated Press's coverage of Friday's deep U.S. stock market dive in two Friday afternoon reports engaged in the reality avoidance longtime readers here have come to expect. An item by Stan Choe ("Get used to it: Big drops for stocks are back again") spent most of its verbiage on "volatility," and only cited "China's sharp economic slowdown ... Tensions in the Middle East ... the plunge in…

The press's fierce determination to avoid blaming any of the steep decline in this nation's stock markets so far this year on horrid U.S. economic data, or on the Obama administration which has given us such a sour economic environment, has gone way beyond annoying. Shortly after noon at Yahoo Finance, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average's Friday dive hit 500 points, Nicole Sinclair, who is also…

On Saturday, after one of the worst year-opening weeks for the stock market in many years, Myles Udland at BusinessInsider.com complained that "The stock market is having a nightmare start to 2016 and it's all the Fed's fault." This sentiment is apparently widely held in the media. At NationalInterest.org on Tuesday, Christopher Whalen wrote that "the Fed created the current unstable market…

It would appear that Yuri Kageyama at the Associated Press has fallen into the trap of believing the rubbish her employer and much of the rest of the world's press has been pushing about how the world's economies really aren't performing all that poorly, that this "new normal" world isn't all that bad, and what we are seeing is all we have a right to expect. You see, Kageyama doesn't understand…

In the present, liberals vehemently oppose what conservatives stand for (and vice versa, of course). But do liberals believe there was a time when conservatism was somewhat reasonable, or at least not appalling? Martin Longman offered an answer in a Friday post: It was “the reaction to FDR’s New Deal” that crystallized the suspicious, radical conservatism of today. “Conservatism is supposed to…

Yesterday at NewsBusters, Ken Shepherd noted how quickly and gleefully the New York Times jumped ("an impressive sprint capping off a year of solid job growth") on December's relatively strong jobs report. The Associated Press joined the parade — "US EMPLOYERS HIRE AT BLISTERING PACE, DEFYING GLOBAL TRENDS" – and kept its story as its lead in its Business "Top Stories" until late afternoon.…

Friday's NBC Nightly News failed to cover the arrests of two Iraqi refugees in Texas and California on terror charges. This omission came hours after the network's morning show, Today, led their broadcast with the story. The same evening, ABC and CBS's evening newscasts both covered the arrests of Aws Mohammed Younis al-Jayab and Omar Faraj Saeed al Hardan, who are accused of having connections…

Tricia Bishop, the deputy editorial page editor at Baltimore Sun, also writes a biweekly column. Bishop was impressed three years ago when the White Plains, New York-based Journal News published an interactive online map showing "the addresses (and names) of all pistol permit holders" in two Empire State counties. Very few others were. Though the outrage over the paper's move was (excuse the…

Don Lemon acted less as an anchor and more like a liberal activist during two segments on Wednesday's CNN Tonight — tag-teaming with Igor Volsky of Think Progress to repeatedly interrupt and shout down conservative radio host Ben Ferguson over his support for gun rights. Lemon dismissed Ferguson's concern over President Obama's executive orders: "Does anybody in their right mind out there in…

Today was a fairly brisk day for economic data, as four noteworthy reports were released. One of them contained good news, but with a heavy asterisk. The other three were either not good, period, or came in below expectations. Readers here probably know which one the Associated Press was still carrying at its Top Business Stories page as of 2:39 p.m. Of course, it was the one with good news.

In November and December, the New York Daily News characterized the NRA and its CEO Wayne LaPierre as a jihadists and terrorists. Now it has set its sights on Republican Party presidential candidates and leaders who are defending the plain, Supreme Court-upheld wording of the Constitution's Second Amendment and Congress's power to make laws over lawless presidential actions. Wednesday's NYDN…

Tuesday's CNN Newsroom gave a platform to left-wing commentator David Love, who asserted in a Monday column for theGrio.com that "if Black Lives Matter protesters were to take over a federal building armed to the teeth with firepower — and they certainly would not do this — they would wind up dead or in prison for life on terrorism charges." Love criticized the handling of an armed occupation of…

On Monday's CNN Newsroom, Deborah Feyerick touted how anonymous "critics" were likening Ammon Bundy's group that took over a wildlife refuge facility in Oregon to Islamist terrorists: "Everybody remembers Ruby Ridge...and the government certainly does not want something like that. But...critics are arguing that if this was another group...there are different hashtags out there now mocking this…

Media bias is hydra-headed in its perniciousness.  It operates on many levels - in many ways.  One of its practitioners’ favorite moves is the terrible headline.  In which they knowingly - or unknowingly - tip their hand on the story at hand.  These heinous headlines can effectively work to sway casual, drive-by media consumers - who don’t go deep into multiple articles to get a more fully-formed…