February 1, 2012
From a post by OpinionJournal.com’s editor James Taranto (original post date 1/5/12):
Two Papers in One!
(Read the original post at opinionjournal.com – scroll halfway down to “Two Papers in One”)
January 25, 2012
From a post by OpinionJournal.com’s editor James Taranto (original post date 1/24/12):
The Associated Press “fact checks” Jan. 23′s debate, and again shows how ridiculous the whole genre is:
Romney: “I don’t think we can possibly retake the White House if the person who’s leading our party is the person who was working for the chief lobbyist of Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac was paying Speaker Gingrich $1.6 million at the same time Freddie Mac was costing the people of Florida millions upon millions of dollars.”
The facts: While going after Gingrich forcefully on the issue, Romney did not mention his own earnings from the government-backed lender and its sister entity, Fannie Mae, which came to light in his most recent financial disclosure report.
The report shows he has as much as $500,000 invested in the two lenders. GOP presidential hopefuls almost across the board have blamed the two institutions for contributing to the housing crisis that helped to drag the nation into recession. Among Romney’s ties: a mutual fund worth up to $500,000 that includes assets from both lenders among other government income, and separate investments in each of the lenders in Romney’s individual retirement account, each worth between $100,000 and $250,000.
Romney campaign officials said Monday the investments were handled by a trustee with no direction by the candidate.
The AP not only does not refute Romney’s factual assertions, it doesn’t even evaluate them. Instead, it responds to Romney’s criticism of Gingrich by offering its own criticism of Romney. That’s fine in a commentary by a Gingrich partisan, or a Democratic partisan seeking to spread the dirt as widely as possible. But the AP is supposed to be in the business of news.
January 18, 2012
from a report by Tom Blumer posted at newsbusters.org on Jan. 15:
…Another [news item] from the totalitarian nation of North Korea that is getting under reported in most of the world’s press, is its “criticism sessions” (i.e., rat out your neighbor, coworker, etc.) identifying North Koreans who allegedly weren’t sufficiently grief-stricken over the December death of Kim Jong Il, weren’t sufficiently demonstrative about it, or didn’t attend enough mourning events, as well as the punishments for such transgressions which have reportedly followed.
The source of this news story is the Daily NK, a South Korea-based web site described by AFP (Agence France-Presse) as “an Internet website run by opponents of North Korea.” The opening paragraphs from Wednesday’s Daily NK report read as follows:
Harsh Punishments for Poor Mourning
The North Korean authorities have completed the criticism sessions which began after the mourning period for Kim Jong Il and begun to punish those who transgressed during the highly orchestrated mourning events.
Daily NK learned from a source from North Hamkyung Province on January 10th, “The authorities are handing down at least six months in a labor-training camp to anybody who didn’t participate in the organized gatherings during the mourning period [for dictator Kim Jong-il], or who did participate but didn’t cry and didn’t seem genuine.”
Furthermore, the source added that people who are accused of circulating rumors criticizing the country’s 3rd generation [rule of the country] are also being sent to re-education camps or being banished with their families to remote rural areas.
Daily NK earlier reported news that criticism sessions were being held at all levels of industry, in enterprises and by local people’s units starting on December 29th, the last day of the mourning period. A source said at the time that the central authorities had ordered the sessions to be completed by January 8th.
The North Hamkyung source commented of the sessions that they “created a vicious atmosphere of fear, causing people to accuse (Kim Jong Un, the son of Kim Jong Il) of preying on the people now that he has taken power.”
The AFP report on North Korea’s…denial fails to mention the “criticism sessions” which give the Daily NK story’s credibility, especially since the Daily NK reported the existence of those sessions nine days earlier, before it knew the specifics of what might result from them….
Internet searches for news stories about the “criticism sessions” and punishments indicate that there hasn’t been anything about either in stories about “North Korea” at the Associated Press or the New York Times. …
(Adapted and excerpted from: newsbusters.org.)
January 11, 2012
From a report by Julia Seymour at businessandmedia.org (original post date 1/9/12):
In November 2011 it became public knowledge that the Chevy Volt could possibly catch fire weeks after a serious accident. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened its investigation into the matter on Nov. 25. Now General Motors is trying to recall all of the Volts for “enhancements,” all while attempting to avoid the word recall. ABC and NBC are also avoiding the topic.
On Jan. 5 Associated Press reported that GM “will ask Volt owners to return the cars to dealers for structural modifications.” NPR reported that “GM is fixing the cars under a customer service campaign. That’s kind of like a recall, but it comes without the bad publicity or the federal scrutiny of a safety recall.”
GM certainly isn’t getting much scrutiny from the mainstream news media over the recall of the heavily subsidized autos. Two of the three broadcast networks have so far avoided sharing this story about the Volt, a gas-electric plug-in hybrid vehicle that they have hyped since January 2007.
Many network stories have touted the gas mileage of the vehicle, some even claimed the Volt could go hundreds of miles without gas. Yes, but only if you stop to charge it roughly every 35-40 miles (depending on driving conditions) since the car switches to its gasoline motor after the initial electric charge runs out. That could take four hours, according to one CBS report.
[As of Jan. 9] Neither ABC, nor NBC have mentioned GM’s decision to fix the roughly 8,000 Chevy Volts by reinforcing the area around the batteries since that news came out Jan. 5, 2012. Only CBS mentioned it on the “Evening News” that night and again on CBS “Morning News” Jan. 6, according to a Nexis search.
January 4, 2012
From a post by OpinionJournal.com’s editor James Taranto (original post date 12/8/11):
Thomas Beaumont of the Associated Press describes a new Mitt Romney campaign ad:
“I’m a man of steadiness and constancy. I don’t think you’re going to find somebody who has more of those attributes than I do,” the former Massachusetts governor said in a new TV ad that included grainy home videos of his wife and five sons. There was no mention of equivocations and policy reversals that his critics have pointed out.
Note what Beaumont did in that last sentence. Just as “some say” is journalese for “I think,” “There was no mention of” means “In my opinion, someone should mention.”
(Read the original post at opinionjournal.com – scroll halfway down to “Reporter Tricks”)
December 14, 2011
From a post by OpinionJournal.com’s editor James Taranto (original post date 12/9/11).
At [a debate recently, Republican presidential candidate] Newt Gingrich declared: “So in a Gingrich administration, the opening day, there will be an executive order about two hours after the inaugural address; we will send the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as of that day.”
The presence of the U.S. Embassy in Israel’s largest metropolitan area rather than its capital has long been a sore point for Americans who sympathize with the Jewish state. But Gingrich is far from the first presidential candidate to promise such a move, a history that leads the Associated Press to produce one of its “fact check” articles. The dispatch…is titled “Fact Check: Israel Embassy Promise May Be Empty.” It exemplifies what is wrong with the “fact check” genre, so much so that it shows the AP literally doesn’t know the meaning of the word “fact.”
The trouble here is that there isn’t a fact to check. Gingrich’s statement is one of intent, not fact. To the extent that the headline is true, it is because it is trivial. Any promise by any politician “may be empty.”
Here is the most persuasive part of [the AP] rebuttal:
THE FACTS: A promise to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has become a standard part of pro-Israel political rhetoric. Similar pledges were made during their campaigns by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But no administration has ever acted on such a promise once in office. . . .
A 1995 U.S. law recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and ordered the U.S. embassy to move to Jerusalem from a neutral site in nearby Tel Aviv. Using their presidential power, Clinton, Bush and Obama have routinely suspended the relocation of the embassy while saying the U.S. is still committed to doing it.
Apart from the bizarre reference to Tel Aviv as “a neutral site”–most Arab and Muslim countries refuse to recognize Israeli sovereignty at all, not just in Jerusalem and the West Bank–these paragraphs are factual.
These facts lend support to the conclusion that, as the headline puts it, Gingrich’s promise to move the embassy is “empty”–or, to put it in more neutral terms, that it is unlikely that a President Gingrich would actually move the embassy. And we agree with that conclusion: It is unlikely. But that is a conjecture, an educated guess about the future, not a fact. …
But the idea that Gingrich’s pledge is contrary to fact because other politicians have failed to keep the same promise is beyond ludicrous. Did the AP in 2008 run a “fact check” rebutting Barack Obama’s promise to enact “heath-care reform” because so many previous presidents have futilely attempted to do so? …..
It would not have been hard to recast this story to make it journalistically sound, though it would have entailed a bit more work. [The AP reporter] could have begun by reporting the Gingrich promise, then put it in historical context by noting the record of other presidents. The arguments for why such a move is a bad idea could have been aired, too–not in [the reporter's] own voice, but by interviewing diplomats or scholars who think it’s a bad idea. It might also have been worthwhile to seek a follow-up interview with Gingrich or a spokesman to ask why voters should expect him to keep this promise when past presidents haven’t.
Instead, the AP published what is essentially an opinion piece, and a rather lazy one at that. …To label that a “fact check”–as if it had some greater authority than actual reporting–is fundamentally dishonest.
November 30, 2011
From a post by OpinionJournal.com’s editor James Taranto (original post date 11/21/11).
Scott Brown is probably the most vulnerable Republican senator up for re-election next year. His likely opponent, Elizabeth Warren, is a hard-left Harvard professor who has described herself as having “created much of the intellectual foundation” for the anarchist-socialist [Occupy Walll Street] movement. Massachusetts, of course, is one of the few places where that may be a plus for a political candidate.
The New York Times’s Nicholas Confessore reports that Warren plans to make an issue of the contributions Brown has received from people who work in the financial industry. How much would that be?
Here’s one way of looking at it: According to the Center for Responsive Politics, so far in the 2012 cycle he has received just over $1.2 million from people working in securities and investment, plus $62,000 from industry political action committees [PACs]. That’s less than half of New York Democrat Chuck Schumer’s haul: [Schumer received] nearly $2.6 million from individuals and $147,000 from PACs. Kirsten Gillibrand, also a New York Democrat, has raised over $2.2 million from individuals and $190,000 from PACs.
But here’s another way of looking at it–Confessore’s:
Mr. Brown, a freshman who harnessed populist Tea Party anger to win the seat once held by Edward M. Kennedy, has taken more money from the financial industry than almost any other senator: all told, more than $1 million during the last two years, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
Presumably this is also true–the number of senators who have out-raised Brown in this sector is small–but you get a fuller picture when you know that at least two Democrats have done so by quite a large margin.
Here’s another example of the tendentious presentation of statistics, from Politico:
Overall this cycle, about 13 percent of labor groups’ political action committee contributions–just over $2 million–have gone toward GOP [Republican] candidates, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s still dwarfed by the nearly
$14 million in union cash that’s gone to Democrats this cycle, but the GOP appears to be gaining ground with union donors after receiving only 6 percent of total contributions in 2010 and 8 percent in the 2008 cycle.
That’s the fourth paragraph. The headline: “Big Labor Shells Out for GOP Friends.” Again, it is consistent with the facts, but in a rather skewed way.
Read original post at OpinionJournal.com. (Scroll one-third of the way down the page to “Leading with Statistics”)
November 16, 2011
From a Media Research Center Special Report:
…A team of Media Research Center analysts examined every Campaign 2012 segment on the three broadcast network weekday morning programs from January 1 to October 31, 2011. Our analysts used the same methodology we employed four years ago to review the [2008 presidential] campaign coverage on those same programs for the equivalent time period (January 1 through October 31, 2007).
These shows reach a sizable audience of potential voters: ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS’s The Early Show and NBC’s Today averaged more than 12.5 million viewers in October, many times more than the combined audience for the Fox News Channel, MSNBC and CNN at the same hours (about 1.5 million viewers).
Unlike the networks’ evening newscasts, the two- and four-hour long morning shows can spend far more time delving into a candidate’s record. And unlike the networks’ Sunday morning shows, the morning news shows are not geared toward political junkies, but rather the everyday voters that campaigns seek to reach. Consequently, the broadcast morning shows are a prime battleground in the candidates’ competition for media attention and positive coverage.
For this study, our analysts tabulated the total amount of coverage given to each of the candidates, including all field reports, interviews and brief news items. Then they undertook a more detailed examination of the interviews conducted with either the candidates or their designated surrogates, tallying the airtime and the ideological orientation of the questions posed.
The results show none of the Republican candidates received the celebrity “rock star” coverage meted out to the top Democratic candidates (Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards) four years ago. Instead, the networks highlighted perceived controversies and gaffes among the [Republican] candidates. In interviews, the morning hosts hit the Republicans with questions drawn largely from a liberal agenda.
And, in spite of the terrible economic situation, Barack Obama was still treated mostly as a celebrity, with the networks providing the President and his political team a forum to trash their competitors, but offering relatively little scrutiny of [his] record. …..
Four years ago, the network coverage promoted the Democratic candidates and cast their strong liberal views as mainstream. This year, our study finds the networks are disparaging the Republican candidates and casting them as ideological extremists:
Labeling:
Agenda:
Tone:
During the 2008 campaign, the network morning shows acted as cheerleaders for the Democratic field. This time around, they are providing far more hostile coverage of the various Republicans who are running, while treating Obama’s re-election campaign to the same personality-driven coverage that was so helpful to the then-Illinois Senator four years ago.
If the real decisions in our democracy are to be in the hands of voters, then the news media owe viewers a fair and unbiased look at the candidates in both parties. That means asking the candidates questions that reflect the concerns of both sides — liberals and conservatives alike. And the syrupy coverage awarded year after year to the Democrats’ celebrity candidates in no way matches the pretense of journalists holding both sides equally accountable, without fear or favor.
Read the entire report at mediaresearch.org.
November 2, 2011
From a “Best of the Web” post by OpinionJournal.com’s editor James Taranto:
Incandescent light bulb, used by Americans for over 100 years.
House Republicans failed [in July] in an effort to repeal the Bush-and-Pelosi-era ban on traditional incandescent light bulbs, which begins to take effect at the end of this year. The vote was 233-193 in favor of repeal, but the bill was introduced under a procedure that required a two-thirds super-majority. The Associated Press responded by quibbling with Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, whom it describes as “a driving force” behind the repeal effort:
“If you are Al Gore and want to spend $10 for a light bulb, more power to you,” Barton said. [Barton] exaggerated the cost of most energy-efficient bulbs and neglected to mention that they last years longer than old incandescent bulbs, which give off about 90 percent of the energy they consume as heat.
The AP does not hold itself to the same fastidious standards, though. The dispatch’s headline is “House Republicans: Down With Squiggly Light Bulbs”–even though the GOP [the Republican Party] is as permissive toward the squiggly compact fluorescent bulbs as it is toward the old-fashioned incandescent ones. [They want consumers to have the choice to buy the light bulb of their choice.]
London’s left-wing Guardian’s headline is an outright falsehood: “Republican Bill to Ban Energy-Saving Lightbulbs Fails.” Here’s the sarcastic first paragraph:
A Republican campaign to defend America against a sweeping assault on personal freedoms–or energy-saving lightbulbs [CFLs] as they are more commonly known–went down in defeat on Tuesday night.
That’s like describing the repeal of Prohibition as a ban on nonalcoholic drinks.
Read the original post at OpinionJournal.com. (scroll one-third of the way down the page to “Accountability Journalism”)
NOTE:  Under federal law, incandescent bulbs are being phased out in 2012, when American manufacturers no longer will be allowed to make 100-watt bulbs. By Jan. 1, 2014, the only incandescents left on the market will be three-way bulbs, plant lights and appliance lamps. Republican congress members attempted in July to repeal this law that would eventually prohibit the sale of incandescent bulbs, so that consumers would have the choice between buying the incandescents or CFLs or LEDs.
Consumers have been slow to accept the two emerging alternative technologies, known as CFLs and LEDs. The main complaints: CFLs, or compact fluorescent lights, cast a harsh, greenish beam, unlike the warm, amber glow of incandescents. Also, they contain mercury, a hazardous material which cannot be thrown into the regular garbage. LEDs and CFLs are much more expensive than traditional light bulbs. Neither variety is universally available in dimmer form and, therefore, not always ideal for people partial to mood lighting. In their final months of retail life, incandescents still dominate market share, accounting for about 82 percent of sales.
October 26, 2011
…Socialists, communists and Marxists roam the Occupy Wall Street rallies, yet zero network news stories since the protests began used any of those three words to label protesters or their goals. Network reporters won’t even explain that protesters are calling for a revolutionary-style change.
Business & Media Institute analyzed 115 news reports, briefs and anchor reads that mentioned the Occupy protests. BMI found that only 6 percent (seven stories out of 115) have even mentioned the word “revolution” in stories about the protests. In one of those instances, the word was actually describing the violent Middle East uprisings that supposedly inspired the occupiers. The other mentions were in passing and none of the stories explained what “revolution” means to the occupiers. …..
According to former Clinton pollster Douglas Schoen 31 percent of the protesters “would support violence to advance their agenda,” he wrote in the Oct. 18 Wall Street Journal.
ABC, CBS and NBC network news stories have ignored this aspect of the protests, focusing instead on non-controversial things like ‘complimentary’ breakfasts and yoga. …
Yoga and libraries are much more innocuous to Americans than video of protesters waving signs that read: “Socialism is the alternative.” …..
In New York City, an Occupy Wall Street protester led the crowd in a screaming chant: “What do we want? Revolution! When do we want it? Now!,” according to video from the anti-American state-sponsored program Russia Today. One sign from that same protest declared: “A Job is a Right. Capitalism Doesn’t Work.”
Extremist Support for Occupy Wall Street [OWS]
The list of extremist groups that support OWS has grown to include the Socialist Party USA and The Nazi Party of America. In its view, the group is willing to partner with “open communists” to defeat who they called “judeo-capitalist banksters.”
Marchers at Occupy Chicago proudly carried red flags to show their support for communism, while one of them wore a CPUSA (Communist Party USA) t-shirt. But in the past month, ABC, CBS and NBC news programs have ignored such connections.
Fox Business senior correspondent Charles Gasparino wrote in The New York Post, “It’s not an overstatement to describe Zuccotti Park as New York’s Marxist epicenter.”
He described the scene at the park: “Flags with the iconic face of the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara are everywhere; the only American flag I saw was hanging upside down. The ‘occupiers’ openly refer to each other as ‘comrade,’ and just about every piece of literature on offer (free or for sale) advocated socialism in the Marxist tradition as a cure-all for the inequalities of the American economic system.” …..
Protesters Don’t Want Jobs, They Want ‘Socialism’
Networks have interviewed some protesters with legitimate economic worries. Many are angry that the banks were bailed out, but they would likely [verbally] attack the banks rather than the government for doing the bailing. News programs have aired footage of protesters demanding to know “where are the jobs?”
But if the Occupy protesters were just upset about the very high unemployment rate, then why have people actually quit their jobs to go protest the banks? It would make sense for the long-term unemployed to protest the bad economy, but they aren’t the only ones in Zuccotti Park and in cities across the country.
[A few employed people who quit their jobs to join the protesters in New York were interviewed for news articles.]Â Clearly, in those cases the greedy banks hadn’t stopped them from being employed yet each decided to quit their jobs at a time of prolonged 9.1 percent unemployment.
In fact, what many of the protesters want is not a fair shot at a job. Or even a job. They want to be paid regardless of whether they work or not and they want their “fair” share of the evil bankers’ profits. According to polling of the protesters, 85 percent are already employed.
An unofficial, user submitted list of demands revealed the socialistic utopian fantasy held by some proponents of Occupy Wall Street. Here are just a few of that person’s demands:
While that may sound farfetched such wishes are prevalent among the occupiers. Video interviews with protesters and speakers have called for the end of “money.” One girl who claimed to be one of “the 99″ said “knowledge should be free.” In context, she meant that college should be free.
Comments from the Occupy Oakland protesters back this up. One woman said, “We’re here to build a movement for economic justice.” Later she clarified that meant “equitable distribution.” Another woman said she had no “sympathy for people with obscene amounts of money.” In her definition, anything more than $200,000 was obscene. She also called her landlord rich so “I say ‘Eat her.’”
Another anti-capitalist occupier called capitalism “A total bogus system based on slavery and genocide.”
The protesters are very willing to describe the socialist (or communist) system they want. They wear pictures of Marxist revolution Che Guevara on their shirts. But the networks so far, have been unwilling to admit that the Occupy Wall Street movement isn’t simply a bunch of angry young people who want to hang out in a park and eat free food and do yoga. They want a radical change to the American political and economic system.