Not News: Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia Calls For 'Destruction of All Ch

March 17th, 2012 9:17 PM
Maybe it's due to budget cutbacks at major establishment news sources, but I doubt it. Maybe it's because they believe nobody cares about news out of the Middle East. No, that can't be it. Or maybe it's because they think that people already know and understand the Muslim mindset. Well, after several decades of press attempts to keep it from us, that doesn't make any sense either. Whatever…

CNN's Burnett Lets Axelrod Dodge Question of Giving Back Maher's Milli

March 16th, 2012 12:47 AM
From David Axelrod's Magic Land of the Double Standard: "Cleanup attempt at CNN. Bring the hazmat suits." Tonight on CNN, as reported by several outlets (Mediaite, Politico, LA Times, but not the Associated Press, which as of 11:45 p.m. on Thursday hadn't done a national story about Maher in 10 days), David Axelrod told Erin Burnett, in the process of dodging a question about whether an Obama…

Wires Trumpet Unemployment Claims As Tying '4-Year Low'; Historical Ch

March 15th, 2012 1:18 PM
The exercise of watching the press report on the current week's unemployment claims figure as if it's etched in stone and assessing it as if it's the last word -- only to see the figure get upwardly revised the next week virtually without media comment -- is getting extraordinarily tedious and predictable (but of course watching what they do remains necessary).  At the Associated Press,…

AP Ignores Chu's Indifference Towards High Gas Prices, and His Retract

March 14th, 2012 11:27 PM
  On February 28, as reported at the Politico, Obama administration Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a House panel the following in response to a question he interrupted about his interest in having an "overall goal" of lowering gas prices: “No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy.” Yesterday, also as carried at the Politico, Chu…

'Little Obama Can Do' About Gas Prices? Four Years Ago, Bush's Move to

March 14th, 2012 12:45 PM
The New York Times told us about three weeks ago that "there's little President Obama" can do about the current pump price of gas. Since then, it has become a well-established media meme. Poor guy. Well, not really. Four years ago, another U.S. president did something which caused the barrel price of oil to drop by over $6, and the press spent the rest of the day trying to pretend that the…

More on Rugaber's Risible Report on February's (Not Recognized) Record

March 13th, 2012 12:58 PM
Last night (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted how Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press, also known to yours truly as the Administration's Press, failed to tell his readers that the federal government's $232 billion reported deficit in February was an all-time single-month record. I also went back and showed that another AP reporter in March 2008 did note that February 2008's deficit…

Derrick Who? AP on Day 3 Without Story on Obama's Harvard Hero

March 11th, 2012 3:59 PM
This probably won't surprise anyone, but it should be noted for the record: As of 3:45 p.m. today, almost 72 hours after the related story broke, the Associated Press has not reported on new revelations about the clear influence radical, racist professor Derrick Bell had on now-President Barack Obama 20 years ago -- so influential that Obama "routinely assigned works by Bell as required reading…

Wishful Thinking? AP Headline Overstates Feb. Job Adds by

March 9th, 2012 8:39 PM
Gosh, how did that happen? At the Associated Press as of 7:30 p.m., its Top Business stories (saved here for future reference) top headline read: "Strong 3 months of hiring as US adds 277,000 jobs." The headline at the underlying article (saved here) reads the same. Related pics are after the jump.

Did AP and Rugaber, Obsessed With Managing Economic Expectations, Spin

March 9th, 2012 6:48 PM
Yesterday was sort of "Pick on Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press Day." So when I came across a particularly reprehensible report he filed last night whining about the difficulty the economy may face in meeting heightened expectations -- with yet another reference to the wire service's obsession with its relevance to President Obama's approval ratings and reelection -- I let it go.…

Rush Rips AP's Rugaber for 'Intentionally Misleading' in Report on Une

March 8th, 2012 5:24 PM
Earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted the press's ridiculously forgiving coverage of today's reported increase in unemployment claims while concentrating primarily on RTT News's assertion that the unemployment rate should continue to come down as long as weekly claims stay below 400,000. Three years ago, Christopher Rugaber's threshold at the Associated Press, also known to…

More Grading on the Curve: At RTT, Acceptable Weekly Unemployment Clai

March 8th, 2012 10:29 AM
The Department of Labor reported today that initial claims for unemployment benefits increased to 362,000 from an upwardly revised (as usual) 354,000 the previous week. Expectations were for a reading of 351,000 (Business Insider's email) or 352,000 (Bloomberg). Over at the Associated Press, also known as the Administration's Press, the headlined reaction in its 9:17 a.m. report was: "…

U.S. 'Tent Cities,' Sharp Increase in Homelessness Ignored by Almost E

March 6th, 2012 2:53 PM
Over at the Associated Press in a report with a Tuesday morning time stamp, Christopher Rugaber produced yet another predictable lemonade-from-lemons story about how the economy is allegedly "improving faster than economists had expected. They now foresee slightly stronger growth and hiring than they did two months earlier - trends that would help President Barack Obama's re-election hopes."…

GM Suspends Production of Volt, Blames Media

March 2nd, 2012 7:58 PM
Well, I guess when you think you're going to sell 45,000 cars and you're on track to achieve about 25% of that, something's gotta give. Something gave today, as Government/General Motors announced a temporary suspension of production of the company's centerpiece of environmental correctness, the Chevy Volt, and the layoff of 1,300 employees. Oh, and as readers will see in the Examiner.com…

Rush Rips Into the AP's 'Outrageous Mendacity' in Coverage of 'Loudmou

March 1st, 2012 4:10 PM
Anyone who saw what the Associated Press wrote when former Bush 43 press secretary Tony Snow died in 2008 (original AP article; related NewsBusters post) knew that the wire service would do what it could to subtly distort Andrew Breitbart's considerable accomplishments in exposing leftist hatred, duplicity, and criminality. The only question was what form(s) it would take. Not surprisingly,…