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COMMENTARY | President Barack Obama attended an Associated Press luncheon Tuesday during which he took several questions. Naturally, the topic of the warning he issued to the Supreme Court on Monday arose. Just as a cornered badger will lash out, Obama, clearly on the ropes, lashed out at the Supreme Court on Monday. That is what the Court does -- it overturns unconstitutional laws passed by Congress. Even AP Chairman Dean Singleton pointed this out in a question at the luncheon. Also, there was never a "strong majority" or the Democrats would not have had to use parliamentary tricks and...

We get it, Associated Press. We get it! Rising gasoline prices are NOT President Obama's fault. Or so you want us to believe. However, could you be just a little less blatant in pitching that line? As it is, your lack of subtlety in hammering home that message is embarrassing to read such as your latest example in which you mention that some people blame Obama along with a lot of other reasons but the only people you actually cite in the article are those who find him faultless in the price rise:

It is the religion that dare not speak its name...at least on NBC News and at the Associated Press among other politically correct circles. Both media outlets reported on a verdict in an "honor killings" case in Canada while managing to avoid mentioning a certain religion whose name starts with "M." To watch or read both reports, you would think that "honor killings" was some sort of bizarre ritual limited to the family in question or perhaps a few other members of an unspoken "patriarchal culture. First the AP report on the MSNBC site which does mention a religion but...

From Accuracy in Media’s Logan Churchwell: An internal memo penned by the Associated Press’ Managing Editor Mike Oreskes was leaked and featured on sites such as The Huffington Post and Gawker this morning. As an effort to keep up with the rapidly changing news cycle, Oreskes is now offering a new direction for the wire service. The new plan of action is called “The New Distinctiveness.” But why the change? The AP defines the problem: “AP wins when news breaks, but after an hour or two we’re often replaced by a piece of content from someone else who has executed...

ATLANTA (AP) — Republican Herman Cain criticized President Barack Obama for canceling the space shuttle program — a decision actually made by President George W. Bush — as NASA shifts its focus on travel farther from Earth's orbit.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s campaign is accusing Politico of “unsubstantiated personal attacks” after the news outlet published a story Sunday night claiming two unnamed women made sexual harassment allegations against the candidate more than a decade ago. “Fearing the message of Herman Cain who is shaking up the political landscape in Washington, Inside the Beltway media have begun to launch unsubstantiated personal attacks on Cain,” J.D. Gordon, Cain’s spokesman, said in a statement provided to The Daily Caller. Gordon continued: “Dredging up thinly sourced allegations stemming from Mr. Cain’s tenure as the Chief Executive Officer at the National Restaurant...

<p>Presidential candidate Herman Cain isn't lacking in confidence about his 2012 prospects.</p> <p>He says he expects to finish first or second in each Iowa and New Hampshire.</p>

"Some thoughts on those angry voters. Ask parents of any two-year-old and they can tell you about those temper tantrums: the stomping feet, the rolling eyes, the screaming . . . The voters had a temper tantrum last week."-- ABCs' Peter Jennings, November 14, 1994, explaining the Republican congressional victory. Looks like the Associated Press has had its Peter Jennings temper-tantrum moment. AP's explanation, as per the headline it chose for its story, of the overwhelming, 30-point margin by which Colorado voters rejected a tax-raising referendum? Coloradans were in a "sour mood." More after the jump.

Yeah, Herman Cain won the Florida straw poll, crushing Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. And OK, a CBS poll recently found him tied with Romney among likely Republican primary voters. Sure, he also scored a resounding victory in another straw poll this weekend. And Rasmussen just today released the finding that 56% of GOP voters like Cain's 9-9-9 plan. So is that enough to make the Associated Press consider Cain a first-tier candidate? Nah. On MSNBC's "Daily Rundown" this morning, AP's political editor, Liz Sidoti, sniffed "we still consider him a second-tier candidate." View the video here.

Bush also did it! Bush also did it! That is the current talking point desperately being promoted by the Associated Press, and now picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle, to try to explain away the selling of guns to members of the Mexican drug cartel by the Obama administration. The only problem is that the Associated Press left out a key detail as pointed out by Katie Pavlich of Townhall. First the misleading claim by AP: The federal government under the Bush administration ran an operation that allowed hundreds of guns to be transferred to suspected arms traffickers —...

AP POLL SAMPLE SKEWS TO DEMOCRATS BY 17 POINTS Giddy Democrats and their sock puppets in the media have been crowing about Barack Obama’s post-bin Laden 60% approval rating ever since the results of last week’s AP poll were released. And there’s more good news from AP for the president, you say?On the economy, 52% approve of the way Obama is handling it, while only 47% disapprove? He’s up 54% – 46% on ObamaCare of all things? Seriously? The approval rating on his handling of Libya is 57%? You’re messing with us, right? And he’s only down 47% to 52%...

The Defense Department is refusing to do a speedy review of a Freedom of Information Act request for graphic photos of Osama bin Laden's corpse, setting the stage for a protracted battle over access to the images. In a letter to The Associated Press, the department said the AP did not demonstrate an urgent or compelling need for the photos or show that the information has a particular value that would be lost if not provided in an expedited manner. As a result, it is not clear when or if the photos will be provided. The AP received the letter...

Move over, CBS. Hang up the kid-leather gloves, WaPo/ABC. There’s a new sample-skewing sheriff in town, and it’s the Associated Press. In a new definition of “outlier,� the AP reported that its latest poll from GfK Roper shows Barack Obama with a 60% approval rating in a survey of 1001 adults, with even his approval on the economy shooting past the 50% mark: President Barack Obama’s approval rating has hit its highest point in two years — 60 percent — and more than half of Americans now say he deserves to be re-elected, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll taken...

Today, class, we will discuss matters like The Associated Press Stylebook (APSB) and such. Considered a veritable bible for all things journalistic, the ASPB has been around for more than 30 years. It says, on the cover, that the book is "the industry's best-selling reference, essential for journalists, students, editors and writers in all professions." I know the APSB and I use it as a tool in a writing class I teach at Johns Hopkins University. I fastidiously follow ASPB procedure, except in those instances when I don't. Such instances number exactly two. Readers learned of one in my last...

Headline only.

The New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News and UnionLeader.com will make a major change in national and regional news, feature and photo providers as of Jan. 1, when they subscribe to both the Reuters America and the McClatchy-Tribune Information Services and end their membership in the Associated Press. New Hampshire's only statewide newspapers and largest newspaper website will also continue to feature content from the Scripps Howard News Service and from the Washington-based Politico group. Union Leader Corp. President and Publisher Joseph McQuaid said the move to Reuters and McClatchy offers editors a wider and deeper choice of content...

Well, well, well. Remember back when the Associated Press threatened bloggers for quoting snippets of AP articles? Is the organization considering dipping its toes in the Righthaven waters? The Las Vegas Sun reports that Righthaven has signed up Media News as a client and has sued a blogger on behalf of the Denver Post, after the blogger apparently reposted a Denver Post column by Mike Rosen (with a link and credit). This is interesting for a few different reasons. First, it was just a few weeks ago that the Denver Post published a cryptic "reminder" about copyright that had a...

Revenues from newspapers have fallen by about one-third at the Associated Press since 2008, from $220 million a year to about $140 million in 2010, and now make up just over 20 percent of the organization's total revenue. CEO and President Tom Curley revealed the decline when I asked him last week about the cooperative's business relationship with its member-owners. He added two more financial nuggets: * "We expect it will continue to drop another $5 to $7 million a year" in 2011 and beyond. * The AP loses money on services to newspapers and effectively subsidizes those offerings with...

Much back and forth has gone on this week over whether Republicans are committed to the repeal of the government takeover of health care known as Obamacare. The so-called mainstream media has gotten into the act in an effort to suppress Republican voter turnout. Having a great deal invested in the Obama façade they created, the media is once again in full protect mode trying to help Democrats avoid an out-and-out slaughter on Nov. 2. The only way to suppress GOP turnout is if disheartened voters believe their efforts to expel Democrats won’t make a difference in policy. And the...

When you run into malaprops among Advanced Placement students, you really have to ruminate over the condition of education. “Reading 800-plus Advanced Placement essays at a table of other people doing the same thing tends to inspire waves of correctorial comments of the ‘kids say the darndest/silliest/inanest things’ variety,” Lisa Fluet writes in the October 8, 2010 issue of The Chronicle Review. Fluet, an assistant professor of English at Boston College, shared a few of these: “Some new vocabulary I learned, and some things students asked me to contemplate as a reader of their essays: “‘Dead ass’ means ‘very serious,’...

Memo sent to AP staff From: Kent, Tom Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 11:53 AM Subject: Standards Center guidance: Planned Sept. 11 Quran burning Colleagues, As you know, a group known as the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., has announced that it intends to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11. -snip- Should the event happen on Saturday, the AP will not distribute images or audio that specifically show Qurans being burned, and will not provide detailed text descriptions of the burning.

LIBBY, Mont. (AP) — Instead of saying thanks, some residents rebuked Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Max Baucus on Monday for the very law that could help potentially thousands of asbestos victims here. The health care reform law passed last year expands Medicare coverage for the sick residents of Libby, where years of asbestos pollution from a vermiculite mine made this the nation's deadliest Superfund site. About 400 Libby residents have signed up for the new coverage as of this week, Sebelius said. But many of those from this northwestern Montana town of 3,000 who came to listen to...

Who needs a public relations department when you have a willing accomplice like the Associated Press? A July 28 story written by AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid took a very uncritical look at the recently released "State of the Climate" report. According to Schmid, this report, which has a fair share of critics, makes a definitive call about climate change. (h/t Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com) "Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, the report said its analysis of 10 indicators that are ‘clearly and directly related to surface temperatures, all tell the same story: Global warming is...

As we continue our list of the top ten most left-biased journalists working in America today (See part one here), we have to nominate Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press for spot number nine on the countdown. The Associated Press has been increasingly disappointing at least since Ron Fournier, one of its former bureau chiefs, decided in 2008 to change the APs editorial policy and allow more emotive language and opinion to become an official part of its newswire copy. Not every AP reporter has taken Fournier’s challenge, but boy has Liz Sidoti claimed that policy as her own. Liz...

Perhaps it is frustration, as expressed by Anderson Cooper, with the new White House rules inhibiting reports about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that is now causing a big crack in the Mainstream Media wall which until recently mostly avoided direct criticism of the Obama administration response. However that crack has now turned into a flood of surprising criticism coming from formerly friendly outlets such as the Associated Press. Read this amazing AP report and keep in mind that it is no longer just conservative sources that are harsh in their criticisms of the Obama Gulf oil containment efforts:...

One of the best ways to cajole a reader into accepting a point of view is to use emotional descriptives in writing. It is the difference between opinion style editorials -- like what I write -- and straight news -- like what a wire service like the Associated Press is supposed to be writing. Unfortunately, the AP has been adding ever larger amounts of emotional language to its news and, not surprisingly, that emotion is used to give support to the American left and to denigrate the right. A recent AP story about the rise of the new conservative movement...

CNN has announced that it will cease using all content from the Associated Press effective June 30, and from all appearances will take a run at becoming a credible wire service competitor. Although it would be easy to dismiss this as the blind leaving the blind, this development seems like it has the potential to alter the news landscape and temper some of the worst excesses of press bias and ignorance. Here are a few paragraphs from CNN's internal announcement, as carried at Media Bistro: To: CNN Staff From: Jim Walton We are taking an important next step in the...

CNN will no longer use Associated Press content as part of the network's news coverage, according a memo obtained by Yahoo! News. CNN Worldwide President Jim Walton notified staff of the move Monday, writing that "the content we offer will be distinctive, compelling and, I am proud to say, our own." "Beyond the obvious business reasons for this operating shift — the content we spend our money to create should be the content we present, and less reliance on outside sources will mean more to invest in our organization — there are other important motivations," Walton wrote. "CNN-exclusive content will...

Members of Congress chastised the largest oil companies Tuesday, accusing them of being no better prepared than BP to avert an environmental catastrophe. As the oil executives testified at a House hearing, Rep. Joseph Cao said: "In the Asian culture, we do things differently," Cao said. "During the samurai days, we'd just give you a knife, and ask you to commit hari-kari." As the oil executives testified at a House hearing, Rep. Henry Waxman asserted that the companies' spill response plans amounted to "paper exercises" that mirrored BP's failed plan. Their strategies to plug a spill deep beneath the sea...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Unmanned aircraft have proved their usefulness and reliability in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the pressure's on to allow them in the skies over the United States. The Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry out civilian and law-enforcement functions but has been hesitant to act. Officials are worried that they might plow into airliners, cargo planes and corporate jets that zoom around at high altitudes, or helicopters and hot air balloons that fly as low as a few hundred feet off the...

Amidst the general public discontent with ObamaCare, the Associated Press is spinning that it is not repeal that is favored but merely a bunch of revisions. Left unsaid is if all these revisions are necessary, why did Congress pass such a flawed bill in the first place? Let the AP spin cycle begin: WASHINGTON — Toss it or fix it?Anxious backers of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law are starting to see a flicker of hope.While polls show Americans remain sharply divided over the Democrats' landmark legislation, they aren't clamoring for its repeal. Really? A few paragraphs later AP...

Online news aggregation and curation startup Publish2 is today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference launching a new product dubbed Publish2 News Exchange, with the ambitious goal of disrupting the entire reason for being of The Associated Press. The AP being the cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and TV stations in the US, which operates a monster news and photo distribution network that non-contributing media organizations can subscribe to (for a hefty sum, evidently). Publish2 is taking a swing at the newswire mammoth – they un-lovingly call it an inefficient monopoly – by launching a platform that allows newspaper...

"Unexpectedly." It recent overuse by the Associated Press almost makes me nostalgic for the "green shoots" that the mainstream media kept seeing last year in the midst of rising unemployment and other bad economic news. When you see the AP use that adverb nowadays, you almost always know it involves depressing news on the economic front and this time they did not dissapoint with their story about a sharp increase in jobless claims: WASHINGTON-- The number of people filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week by the largest amount in three months. The surge is evidence of...

The Associated Press, normally a vigorous defender of sunshine laws, appears to have lobbied behind the scenes to quash the release of e-mails that circulated among its reporters and press aides for New York Gov. David Paterson under New York's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). I reported yesterday that Hearst Corporation, which owns the Albany Times-Union, was threatening to object to a FOIL request I filed earlier this year seeking e-mails among Paterson's former communications director Peter Kauffmann, his former press secretary Marissa Shorenstein, and representatives of a variety of news organizations. The Hearst Corporation's justification for that stance was...

Oops! On the heels of a story a couple of days ago which used Congressman Heath Shuler as a source about how racial slurs were probably hurled at the Washington, D.C. Tea Party on March 20, the Associated Press has been forced to backtrack. Here is how AP writer Jesse Washington used what Heath Shuler supposedly heard to promote the idea of a Tea Party chock full of racists: A fourth Democrat, Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina, who is white, backed up his colleagues, telling the Henderson (N.C.) Times-News that he heard the slurs.

Aha! ...Aha! Aha! Aha!Associated Press writer Jesse Washington has investigated the March 20 incident in Washington, D.C. at which members of the Tea Party supposedly hurled the N-word at black Congressmen. Well, no recording of that word being used could be found but that hasn't stopped Washington from blaming the Tea Partiers...for posting the "wrong" video of that incident on YouTube. I kid you not: Three Democratic congressmen — all black — say they heard racial slurs as they walked through thousands of angry protesters outside the U.S. Capitol. A white lawmaker says he heard the epithets too. Conservative activists...

It's incredible to see how many ways the mainstream media are able to analyze and dissect the Tea Party movement phenomenon on a regular basis. But lately it has been en vogue to challenge this movement on merits of race - a popular ad hominem talking point for opponents of the movement. However, the Associated Press, an organization known for its extensive fact checking of conservatives, took a look at the other side of racism in the Tea Party movement - the backlash against "black conservative Tea Party backers." An April 6, 2010 AP story by Valerie Bauman spelled out...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It will probably come as a surprise to most Americans, but the winter just finished was the fifth warmest on record, worldwide. Oh, sure, nearly two-thirds of the country can dispute that from personal experience of a colder-than-normal season. But while much of the United States was colder than usual, December-February - climatological winter - continued the long string of unusual warmth on a global basis.

Marty Lederhandler, an Associated Press photographer who captured on film every U.S. president from Herbert Hoover to Bill Clinton, covered the D-Day landing in 1944 and climaxed a 66-year career with an iconic shot of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, has died. He was 92. > Drafted into the Army in 1940, he became an officer and on June 6, 1944, led his Signal Corps camera team ashore with the 4th Infantry Division at Utah Beach, toting two carrier pigeons along with his camera gear. But when he attached film canisters for the pigeons to return across the Channel...

At age 51, Bill Ayers called himself a "radical" and a "communist." As recently as 2001, Ayers let himself be photographed for a magazine story trampling an American flag. But that's not good enough for the Associated Press. In an article today, AP describes Ayers as a "former radical." AP's de-radicalization of Ayers appeared in an article about a forthcoming biography of Barack Obama, entitled The Bridge, by New Yorker editor David Remnick. Here's the line [emphasis added]:

Global warming? Case closed. Consensus achieved. There can be no debate about it. ClimateGate? Never happened. I refuse to even acknowledge its existence. Must hang on to the global warming belief at all costs even against evidence to to the contrary. That dogmatic stance pretty much sums up the attitude of Associated Press writer Malcolm Ritter in his story about how global warming skepticism can be ascribed to psychological faults: The Copenhagen talks on climate change were convened with a sense of urgency that many ordinary folks don't share. Why is that? One big reason: It's hard for people to...

Scientists from around the world are denouncing an Associated Press article hysterically claiming that global warming is "a ticking time bomb" about to explode, and that we're "running out of time" to do anything about it. As reported by NewsBusters, Seth Borenstein, the AP's "national science writer," published a piece Sunday entitled "Obama Left With Little Time to Curb Global Warming." Scientists from all over the world have responded to share their view of this alarmist propaganda: How can this guy call himself a "science reporter?" He is perhaps the worst propagandist in all the media, and that's stating something....

LONDON – E-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data — but the messages don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press. The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate change. However, the exchanges don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The scientists were keenly aware of how their work would be...

"What they do is their business," Dobbs said yesterday. "I tried to accommodate them as best I could, but I've said for many years now that neutrality is not part of my being." [CNN boss Jonathan] Klein long believed Dobbs was at odds with CNN's desire to position itself as an opinion-free, middle-of-the-road alternative to its cable news rivals -- conservative Fox News and liberal MSNBC. Dobbs got $8M to quit Ny Post ^ | Nov. 16, 2009 | MICHAEL SHAIN A man once, upon learning that I'm conservative, said "You probably think that journalism isn't objective." I was...

Where to begin, where to begin... 11 fact checkers for Sarah Palin's book... and Al Gore still runs around free from any truth-testing. Topix ::: GoreBull warming : Scandal, Thy Name Is Palin : California Screaming ...and your calls! Live at 3pmE/2pmTX/NoonPCall-in number: 1-347-327-9710 Missed it live? Listen here, or download for free from iTunes.

Sarah Palin -- the Associated Press wants folks to believe -- is so pat ently unqualified as a political leader that no one, absolutely no one, could possibly take her seriously. Except, it seems, the Associated Press. Indeed, the latest example -- in which the AP sent 11 (count 'em: 11) reporters to "fact-check" Palin's new book, "Going Rogue" -- suggests that the agency is pathologically obsessed with the former Alaska governor and '08 GOP veep candidate. Gee, what on earth are they afraid of? AP didn't send 11 reporters to fact-check President Obama's two books (it didn't bother to...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US news agency the Associated Press (AP) laid off dozens of employees on Tuesday as part of a plan to reduce its global payroll by 10 percent this year, a union statement said. The News Media Guild, which covers some 1,300 AP editorial and technology unit staffers in the United States, said it did not have an exact number of layoffs because management had not yet formally notified it of the move. The Guild said it had been informed by members of more than 38 layoffs affecting Guild-covered managers, reporters, editors, photographers, and editorial assistants. It...

Last month we heard that the AP might need to make hundreds of layoffs before the end of the year. Some of those layoffs, we hear, could be coming today. A tipster tells us that the word amongst AP union members is that today could be the day for "70 or 80" layoffs. The rumors say that the layoffs will be spread across the company nationally. Although—ominously—we hear that New York staffers have been summoned to an "important meeting" this afternoon. We'll update if we learn more. In the meantime, if you have more details, email us. UPDATE: Another reporter...

I included many of The Associated Press E-mails. (1st name initial, last name @ ap.org) Please e-mail them, not to change their minds, to give them hell for spreading lies, endangering America & failing to do their jobs. They need to know, because they do not, that the majority of the public finds them disgusting and very evil. agoldman@ap.org, akennedy@ap.org, amiga@ap.org, asanner@ap.org, ataxin@ap.org, awestfeldt@ap.org, bdobbin@ap.org, bdraper@ap.org, bfouhy@ap.org, blewis@ap.org, cbabington@ap.org, cbarry@ap.org, clong@ap.org, crugaber@ap.org, cwoodward@ap.org, dbauder@ap.org, ddaniel@ap.org, despo@ap.org, dgram@ap.org, dhastings@ap.org dkdaniel@ap.org, dnephin@ap.org, esimon@ap.org, evandore@ap.org, fdemilio@ap.org, fklug@ap.org, gjohnson@ap.org, gkatz@ap.org, gmulvihill@ap.org, gwong@ap.org, hjkorea@ap.org, javersa@ap.org, jbarbassa@ap.org, jbilleaud@ap.org, jhdavis@ap.org, jheintz@ap.org, jholland@ap.org, jkuhnhenn@ap.org gdjohnson@ap.org, jsong@ap.org, kdaigle@ap.org, kgannon@ap.org,...

When Sarah Palin burst onto the national political stage there was a lot of talk about her distinctive way of talkin', you betcha. Heck, she moved to Alaska when she was too young to speak and grew up in the small town of Wasilla, but doggone it, why did she talk like someone from the movie "Fargo"? Three University of Wisconsin-Madison linguists tackled the conundrum in a research article to be published in the Journal of English Linguistics next month. The answer lies in something that happened in the 1930s. During the presidential campaign, almost every aspect of Palin's life,...