Fortune Whines At Time 'Person of Year' Merkel 'Reversing Course'

December 15th, 2015 3:00 PM
The year isn't even over, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Time's 2015 Person of the Year, has begun to act against the primary reason why the magazine chose her. To refresh from a NewsBusters post last week, Time's Nancy Gibbs cited three reasons for the choice. The clearly most important one, from their perspective, was Merkel's virtually unilateral decision that Germany "would welcome…
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Jerry Brown's Fondness For 'Coercive Power' Gets Little Attention

December 14th, 2015 2:42 PM
Imagine a Republican or conservative governor boasting of his or her use of "the coercive power of government" to accomplish center-right policy goals. The political and media backlash would be furious — and justified. Such statist rhetoric is becoming ever more commonplace on the left, and is rising to ever higher political levels. The establishment press is mostly ignoring this development,…

Ferguson Media Darling Joshua Williams Sentenced to 8 Years For Arson

December 13th, 2015 11:24 PM
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Thursday that Joshua Williams "was sentenced ... to eight years in prison for starting a fire at a QuikTrip in Berkeley (a St. Louis suburb) after an officer-involved shooting there." The Dispatch apparently didn't think it important to tell readers that the crime spree which occurred after that shooting took place despite the fact that the suspect had pulled…
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AP Ignores Rabbi's Politicized White House Hanukkah Invocation

December 13th, 2015 2:10 AM
Josh Lederman at the Associated Press spent the final two paragraphs of his Wednesday evening report on a meeting between President Barack Obama and Israel's President Reuven Rivlin describing "the White House's annual Hanukkah celebration." He wrote that Rivlin "lit a menorah that was made in his homeland during the 1920s." What was said before Rivlin lit the menorah should have been news. As…

PP Admits Sending Aborted Babies to Landfills; AP Plays Defense

December 12th, 2015 10:47 AM
The callousness towards human life at Planned Parenthood is such that it believes that the remains of preborn babies killed during abortions are just like any other "medical waste," and that sending them to landfills — or, perhaps even incinerators — is therefore "humane." That's what one must conclude from reading an Associated Press report Friday evening which strived mightily to play defense…

As Usual, AP Report on Deficit Omits Far Larger National Debt Increase

December 11th, 2015 5:37 PM
For a change, Martin Crutsinger's coverage at the Associated Press of the federal government's November Monthly Treasury Statement wasn't completely full of rose-colored baloney. Crutsinger managed to note how auto-pilot entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are bankrupting the country (not in those words, of course). That said, he somehow thought that highlighting a rare and…

AP Promotes Trump Contrast: Hillary 'Preaches Love and Kindness'

December 11th, 2015 10:40 AM
The Associated Press isn’t being shy about which party it favors with this headline: “As Trump rises, Clinton preaches love and kindness.” On its site, U.S. News & World report took it the natural step further: “As Donald Trump rises with his harsh rhetoric, Hillary Clinton preaches love and kindness.” Reach for the Rolaids. AP’s Lisa Lerer and Ken Thomas began oddly, noting the “kindness”…

AP's 'Spin Meter' Suggests Carson, Trump Hypocrites on Gun Rights

December 9th, 2015 5:17 PM
In the AP Spin Meter today, the newswire's Bill Barrow and Jill Colvin hit Republican presidential candidates Bill Carson and Donald Trump over hypocrisy regarding gun rights. Both candidates have made statements in favor of civilian concealed carry as a preventative measure against terrorist attacks like San Bernardino.

AP Offers Predictably Uncritical Coverage of Obama's Sunday Speech

December 7th, 2015 2:04 AM
At the Associated Press Sunday evening, White House Correspondent Julie Pace's coverage of President Obama's Oval Office address was predictably weak. One could cite at least a half-dozen problems with Pace's story, but two of them were particularly disingenuous.

As Paris Talks Loom, AP Goes Full-Bore Over 'Trying to Save' Earth

November 30th, 2015 7:46 PM
From time to time over the past nine years, I have written about "globaloney," a shorthand term for the pseudo-science behind “climate change,” and “globalarmism” to describe the enviro-hysteria over "global warming" and the misguided public-policy prescriptions arising from that hysteria. Since the Paris climate talks have just begun, the press hysteria has reached a fever pitch. At the…

Former Reporters: AP Suppressed Story on 2008 Israeli Peace Offer

November 30th, 2015 12:23 PM
In predictably disingenuous fashion, the Associated Press claimed in a November 18 story that "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has shined new light on the breakdown of a potentially history-altering round of 2008 peace talks." Abbas acknowledged that Israel offered Palestinians 93.5 percent of the West Bank and other significant concessions. The "light" isn't "new" at all. The wire service…

AP, Despite Weak Economic Data: 'Fundamentals Remain Solid'

November 29th, 2015 10:03 PM
As yours truly noted in several posts at my home blog on Wednesday and at NewsBusters on Friday and Saturday, the torrent of pre-Thanksgiving "getaway day" economic data was largely disappointing. That didn't stop the Associated Press's Chris Rugaber from pushing the "All is well" meme late Wednesday afternoon, declaring, contrary to what anyone's eyes could see, that "the fundamentals of the U.…

AP Hides the Overall Decline in Thanksgiving and Black Friday Sales

November 28th, 2015 6:46 PM
The truth about this year's Thanksgiving and Black Friday store and online sales is out there. It's just that Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, wasn't interested in clearly revealing all of it. Instead, the AP economics writer told readers about the dollar amount of this year's and last year's Thursday and Friday store sales, but failed to quantify the…

AP's Boak Says New-Home Sales 'Recovered' In October; No They Didn't

November 28th, 2015 10:16 AM
On Wednesday, the Associated Press's Josh Boak added to the wire service's collection of weak "Getaway Day" business journalism by declaring that new-home sales "recovered in October." No they didn't. The seasonally adjusted annual rate of 495,000 units reported by the Census Bureau was the fourth-lowest monthly level seen this year, even well below the 521,000 and 545,000 reported in the…