Irony in Yesterday's AP Headlines, Later Altered, on Obama's Unilatera

February 19th, 2014 4:22 PM
The Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, had an interesting pair of headlines near the top of its raw feed yesterday. The first headline used the typical "Republicans attack" approach any time President Obama does something objectionable, which has been quite often. The headline was "Issa Rails Against Obama's 'Imperial Presidency.'" Of course, reporter Steve Peoples didn't let…

AP Goes to the Weather Again to Explain Away Weak Homebuilding Data

February 19th, 2014 1:43 PM
The January 2014 New Residential Construction report released by the Census Bureau this morning was very weak. Building permits fell from December by a seasonally adjusted 5.4% (-1.3% for single-family homes). Housing starts fell by 16.0% (-15.9% single-family. The annualized single-family starts figure of 573,000 was the lowest in 17 months. Naturally, Martin Crutsinger at the Associated…

Grieving AP Virtually Dares GOP to Create More Jobs in Tenn. After UAW

February 17th, 2014 11:41 PM
The folks at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, are really having a hard time processing the UAW's failure to gain the ability to represent Volkswagen's Chattanooga, Tennessee workers in an election held last week. AP journalists, who themselves are members of the News Media Guild, are exhibiting characterstics of still partially being in Stage 1 (Denial) but mostly Stage 2 (…

Press Coverage of UAW's VW-Chattanooga Loss 'Somehow' Overlooks One 'O

February 15th, 2014 8:21 PM
The three Associated Press reports I've seen on the UAW's failure to win the right to represent hourly workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee — the first two were covered in NewsBusters posts here and here; the wire service's 3:52 p.m. report is here — all mention in one way or another what UAW President Bob King is now calling "unprecedented outside interference" in the…

Update: AP Revision to VW-Chattanooga Story Laments UAW's Loss of 'Pot

February 15th, 2014 11:08 AM
Following revisions to initial stories at the Associated Press, aka the Adminstration's Press, can be a revealing if sometimes tedious exercise. A case in point is how reporters Tom Krisher and Erik Schelzig, who are both more than likely represented by the News Media Guild in their jobs at the wire service, changed the tone of their second report following the rejection by employees at…

UAW Fails to Organize Tenn. VW Plant; AP Report Calls Loss 'Devastatin

February 15th, 2014 12:50 AM
Late news out of Chattanooga, Tennessee Friday night was that workers at that area's Volkswagen plant rejected representation by the United Auto Workers union. The opening paragraph at the 11:17 p.m. story filed by Tom Krisher and Erik Schelzig at the Associated Press, both of whom are more than likely members of the News Media Guild, calls the result "devastating." Later paragraphs imply…

AP Celebrates Facebook Creating Fifty Gender Categories For Its Users

February 13th, 2014 11:30 PM
Associated Press reported Thursday that Facebook is caving to the LGBT (especially T) lobby in completely blurring its gender category. Users can now choose from fifty options of gender-blending instead of the allegedly archaic "gender binary" of male and female. AP's Martha Mendoza offered one paragraph of dissent to Focus On The Family, and the rest was loaded with transgender activists,…

Liberal Media Schizophrenic Over Wendy Davis's Virtual Flip-Flop on Ab

February 13th, 2014 1:01 PM
The latest evidence that Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis can't stay true to her convictions or doesn't have any (take your pick) is her position modification on abortion. Steve Ertelt at Life News relays an underlying Dallas News item, telling his readers that "Davis said she would back a 20-week abortion ban as long as it had two exceptions, to kill disabled babies and a…

As Retail Sales Figures Get Revised Down, AP Continues to Promote Myth

February 13th, 2014 10:28 AM
It isn't at all difficult to spot the absurdity in Josh Boak's 9:45 a.m. Associated Press report today on retail sales, which declined 0.4 percent from December on a seasonally adjusted basis. His first paragraph claims that "consumer spending at the end of 2013" had "momentum," while his second shows that the there was none (bolds are mine):

New London, Conn. Columnist: 'Not a Single Thing' Done in Almost 9 Yea

February 11th, 2014 11:53 PM
Veteran journalist David Collins is a columnist at the New London Day in Connecticut. In a column supposedly published on Sunday but "updated" on Saturday (I'm not kidding), Collins assessed the aftermath of the Supreme Court's odious Kelo v. New London decision in 2005 in reacting to a lengthy story by Charlotte Allen in the February 10 issue of the Weekly Standard. In the process, he…

As Expected, AP Scrubs Admin's 'Political Angling' in Latest Coverage

February 11th, 2014 10:17 AM
As I noted Monday night (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, displayed rare candor when he opened his 8:28 p.m. report on the latest unilateral changes to Obamacare by describing their motivation as "Angling to avoid political peril." I wrote last night that "I’ll be surprised if it (the "political" characterization)…

AP's Opening Admission on Obamacare Employer Delays: Obama 'Angling to

February 10th, 2014 10:03 PM
The opening of Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar's 8:28 p.m. report on President Obama's latest round of extra-legal, extra-constitutional manuevers relating to the Affordable Care Act — scratch that, it really isn't the Affordable Care Act as written any more; it really is "Obamacare," defined as "whatever Obama and his administration have done to the ACA as originally written" — is a keeper. That's why…

Anti-Voter ID March Requires Participants Bring Photo ID; Most Media O

February 9th, 2014 9:46 PM
Leftist protesters trying to portray themselves as mainstream gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina yesterday to protest moves made by the Republican-dominated state government yesterday. One of protesters' major objections is to a voter-identification law passed last year. That's more than a little ironic, because guess what organizers required march participants to have? That's right: photo…

As Press Pretends Seasonally Adjusted Figures Are What Happened, Econo

February 8th, 2014 4:11 PM
One of the more annoying aspects of business press reporting is its participants' singular focus on seasonally adjusted data to the exclusion of the underlying figures. Many reports on the economy at least tag the figures reported as seasonally adjusted; but there seems to be a trend away from doing even that. For example, the Associated Press has routinely labeled weekly initial jobless…