Why are the Associated Press’s video people piling on Toyota?

Moments ago, in going to business-related stories at hosted.ap.org (example here), I found that the rotation of video teases the AP is presenting to readers has 12 items. Six of them, presented consecutively, relate to Toyota. Each is negative.

No doubt the situations in which the company is involved are newsworthy, but is one company’s misfortune half of everything that’s going on in the business world?

Here’s the lineup as of 4:45 p.m. ET on Monday:
- Toyota Tell Dealers Parts on Way to Fix Pedals
- AP Source: Govt. Clears Toyota Gas Pedal Fix
- Toyota Admits Design Problems with its Brakes
- Toyota Probe Deepens Amid Confusion Over Risk
- Trans. Secy: Don’t Drive Recalled Toyotas
- Toyota Sales Drop 16 Percent in January
- Small Businesses Aim for Loan Growth
- Econony Grew in Fourth Quarter; Jobs Still Sparse
- Bernanke Wins Confirmation to Second Term
- Ford returns to Profitability after 4 Years
- Obama: “We All Hated Bank Bailout”
- Charges Filed Against Bank of America, Frmr. CEO

It’s hard to understand why the “Don’t Drive Recalled Toyotas” story is still there, when Transportation Secretary LaHood has clarified those remarks (the link is to, ahem, an AP story), and why today’s news about unemployment claims hasn’t made the rotation.

To the extent the government is leaning hard on the company, somebody in the press should be questioning whether the motivations are purely related to safety or whether they also involve generating as much negative publicity as possible about the principal foreign-based competitor of government-controlled General Motors and Chrysler. AP’s saturation coverage in the rotation also begs the question of whether it would be as rough on those two wards of the state in similar circumstances, or whether it would be looking over its shoulder to avoid getting White House pressure as Reuters experienced when it pulled Terri Cullen’s tax column earlier this week. Cullen had the nerve to point out that there are some middle-class tax hits in President Obama’s budget.

I believe I’m also correct in asserting that AP’s journalists are mostly unionized, while I know that Toyota’s workers are mostly if entirely not.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE: Chris at My Random Blog notes a typical form of distortion at a site that doesn’t deserve a link.

You would think that someone going to the trouble of reporting on something would at least provide the most basic of relevant numbers so that readers could understand what they’re telling us.

That isn’t the case with the 11:51 a.m. version of Uncle Sam’s report on unemployment claims by the Associated Press’s Stephen Bernard and Tim Paradis. Their report failed to specifically state what analysts predicted, and waited until a much later paragraph to tell us what their predictions are for tomorrow’s jobs report.

The first three paragraphs of that version of the story are in the graphic capture that follows:

For the record:

• According to this CNNMoney.com report, “Economists were expecting claims to drop to 455,000, according to a consensus estimate from Briefing.com.” In other words, claims were expected to go down by roughly twice as much as they actually went up.
• A much, much later paragraph in the AP pair’s report told us that expectations for tomorrow’s jobs report are for 5,000 jobs to have been added in January and for an uptick in the unemployment rate to 10.1% from its current 10%. Did the AP pair withhold these numbers because the jobs expectation is unimpressive, while the rate increase is depressive?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

UPDATE: The AP’s 12:28 p.m. report is an improvement, as the jobs-related info has moved to a much higher paragraph, but the jobless claims expectations are still nowhere to be found:

I had forgotten that Al Gore shared his Ig-Nobel Prize with the IPCC’s disgraceful leader, which makes the following point raised at the American Interest (HT Instapundit) so spot-on:

Al Gore, who shared the Nobel Prize with Rajendra Pachauri and the increasingly discredited IPCC, has a special responsibility to environmentalists and others in the United States to clearly state that bad science and poor judgment have no place in the leadership of the movement to stop climate change.

I suspect Gore still believes that the “science” is “settled.” But if he no longer does, I doubt that he would ever have the guts to admit it.

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At Calculated Risk, a “Rebound? What Rebound?” observation: “The current level of (vehicle) sales …. (is) still below the lowest point for the ’90/’91 recession (even with a larger population).”

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Phillip Klein at the American Spectator’s blog, in a post that should be called “Obama v. Bush for Dummies” — “Why Obama Is an Even Bigger Spender Than Bush.”

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Las Vegas’s mayor reacted to this Obama statement (“When times are tough, you … don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college”) by saying that the president is “a real slow learner” (HT Hot Air).

I’m not so sure. A “brilliant” (so we’re told) person legitimately interested in the economy’s recovery would not repeat the same commerce-suppressing mistakes … would he?

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Allan Sloan “discovers” what readers of this blog have known for months — “Next in Line for a Bailout: Social Security.”

From Loughborough, UK:

19 January 2010

TUESDAY 9AM: A good Samaritan saved the life of a promising athlete after a horrific accident thanks to her first aid.

Julie Hayton, who works as a rehabilitation physio at Leicester Tigers, happened to be passing triathlon prospect Charlotte Roach (21) after she was run over by a Land Rover while on a training bicycle ride in Rotherby Road, Gaddesby.

Charlotte was training with the British Triathlon Federation’s TriGold, based at Loughborough University, when disaster struck leaving her with both lungs punctured, 12 fractured vertebrae, broken ribs and a snapped collarbone.

Her training colleagues thought she was just winded, but when they flagged down Julie it became obvious there was a bigger problem. She said: “I’ve lived in Gaddesby for three years and had never driven along that road, but the main road out of the village was closed.

“When we stopped I knew by looking at her that she was more than just winded. I explained to the group who I was and what I did and assessed Charlotte.”

Julie was faced with making a snap decision – whether to move Charlotte and risk permanently paralysing her or leave her still and potentially drown.

Thankfully she made the right decision, saving Charlotte’s life.

She said: “I work with rugby players and I’ve seen all sorts of injuries. Carefully I moved her into a better position but she started gurgling and I realised her right lung was full, as if a tap had been turned on. So I had to move her again.”

The air ambulance was scrambled and Charlotte was taken to Derby Royal Infirmary.

She is now on the road to a full recovery and aims to compete at the 2012 London Olympics.

The accident happened just before Christmas but has only recently come to light.

Paramedics have since praised Julie saying her quick actions saved her life.

Julie said: “I said ‘whoa! That’s a big claim’, but they were insistent and said they would write to Leicester Tigers to praise my efforts.

“When I warned the club about the letter and told them what happened, they couldn’t believe it. But as I told Charlotte when she came to see me a few weeks later, I did nothing for her I wouldn’t have done for anyone else.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

It would seem that the Associated Press wants to consider its January 25 story by Devlin Barrett (“Feds detail Christmas Day attack”; also saved here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes) the last word on what occurred in the hours immediately following Flight 253′s landing in Detroit on Christmas Day.

But if that’s indeed the case, Barrett’s report also serves to prove that the wire service had no business revising originally accurate reports to remove what were apparently inconvenient facts relating to the incident.

To refresh by way of my Big Journalism post on January 15, AP’s initial reports on Christmas afternoon and early Christmas evening told readers that “the man claimed to have been instructed by al-Qaida to detonate the plane over U.S. soil,” and that it had even used the M-word (“Muslim”). But, I wrote, by the middle of the next morning, “The supposedly solid AQ connection somehow became tenuous and unproven,” and the M-word was gone.

This scrubbing conveniently gave the Obama administration precious time during the weekend that followed to regain its bearings after significant initial clumsiness. Ultimately, I noted that AP’s revisions “allowed the President of the United States to inform us (on the Tuesday after the attack), without challenge and as if it was a recent discovery, that — shazam! — the attack might have had something to do with AQ.”

Barrett’s report proves that there is no defense for what AP did, and that authorities knew all they needed to know within hours of Flight 253′s landing (bold is mine):

Here is what officials say happened:

Shortly after noon on Christmas, federal agents were notified that Northwest Airlines flight 253 had arrived at the Detroit airport from Amsterdam, with a passenger who had lit an explosive device on the aircraft.

After being restrained and stripped bare by fellow passengers and crew, Abdulmutallab was handed over to Customs and Border Protection officers and local police.

The officers and an ambulance crew took him to the burn unit at the University of Michigan Medical Center.

Along the way, Abdulmutallab repeatedly made incriminating statements to the CBP officers guarding him. He told them he had acted alone on the plane and had been trying to take down the aircraft.

Abdulmutallab arrived at the hospital just before 2 p.m. Still under guard, Abdulmutallab told a doctor treating him that he had tried to trigger the explosive. The Nigerian said it didn’t cause a blast, but instead began popping and ignited a fire on his groin and legs.

FBI agents from the Detroit bureau arrived at the hospital around 2:15 p.m., and were briefed by the Customs agents and officers as Abdulmutallab received medical treatment.

Shortly after 3:30 p.m., FBI agents began interviewing the suspect in his hospital room, joined by a CBP officer and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

The suspect spoke openly, said one official, talking in detail about what he’d done and the planning that went into the attack. Other counterterrorism officials speaking on condition of anonymity said it was during this questioning that he admitted he had been trained and instructed in the plot by al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, in a brief recording carried Sunday by the Al-Jazeera Arabic news channel, claimed responsibility and promised there would be more attacks on the U.S.

Barrett further reports that Abdulmutallab, after going into surgery and before being interviewed another time by a different team of investigators, “was told of his right to remain silent and right to have an attorney. He remained silent.”

The key takeaway from the bolded text in the excerpt above is that AP’s sources were correct when they originally reported within hours after Flight 253′s landing that the attack was Al Qaida-inspired. Nothing substantively changed in the hours and days that followed that should have caused anyone to water down that assessment in any way — yet the scrubbing I described above nevertheless took place.

Why? Was the wire service overcome by the political correctness bug, deciding that known facts relating to anyone who becomes involved with the U.S. justice system must be suppressed, regardless of their obviousness and demonstrated accuracy? Or even worse, did law enforcement officials or perhaps even Obama administration representatives lean on the AP to revise its original strongly-sourced findings? If it’s either group of people mentioned in the latter question, what were their motivations?

We’ll probably never know what caused the scrubbing, but Devlin Barrett’s report, which the AP would apparently like to see become the first draft of history, has proven beyond doubt that the outfit that likes to think of itself as “The Essential Global News Network” shouldn’t have done it.

From the Wall Street Journal’s January vehicle sales detail — GM had a good month (up 14.6% from January 2009), Ford had a better one (up 24.4%), and Toyota’s was horrid (down 15.8%).

The biggest news to me was at what’s left of Chrysler, which is not much. Sales were down 8% from a year ago to an “I can’t believe I’m typing this” 57,143. Its 14,721 cars sold placed it eighth among all companies in that category, behind the five you’d expect, plus Hyundai and VW.

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ADP’s employment report came in at 22,000 private sector jobs lost in January, beating expectations, at least those posted here, of -65,000. The “consensus” prediction here was -40,000.

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The Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing Index, covering roughly 12% of the economy, had a great month, its best in a long time, coming in at 58.4% (any reading above 50% indicates expansion), up from 54.9% the previous month.

But the Non Manufacturing Index (NMI) released at 10 a.m. this morning came in at a tepid 50.5%, barely moving into expansion after last month’s 49.8%. The prediction here was 51.0%.

The weighted average state of the economy is 51.4%, up from last month’s 50.4%.

That’s the right direction, but the NMI needs to pick up the pace before anyone can say that the recovery is legit.

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From the “Out of Touch” Dept., concerning ORPINO (the Ohio Republican Party In Name Only) and Monday’s night’s endorsement vote:

Central committee members said they were bombarded with e-mails and phone calls from people opposed to what they perceived to be a backroom deal. (But) The committee’s voice vote to endorse Yost was nearly unanimous.

It’s not as if those e-mailers, like, vote or anything, or that they, I dunno, have influence over others who vote (/sarc).

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Stifling dissent? —

Did Reuters Yank Article Because It Was Too Truthful?

White House Gets Reuters To Pull Budget Story

Yours truly has saved the original at Ye Olde Web Host. We import, you decide.

Last time I checked, an op-ed or analysis column, which as I understand it is what Terri Cullen’s article was, differs from a hard-news story. If the columnist has his or her facts wrong, it’s generally his or her problem and his or hers alone, including the hit to their long-term credibility with the public and the publications themselves. If absolute, indisputable, everyone-agrees-with-it, no-possible-debate truth were to become the standard for op-eds and analysis pieces, the Huffington Post would cease to exist, and the Associated Press would shrink by a third.

When’s the last time a wire service pulled a column (not made a correction, pulled an entire column) that made bogus claims about conservative economic or social policies? Doesn’t the thin-skinned White House response look, oh, just a little heavyhanded?

If the Bush White House had pulled such a stunt, we’d be told for the next month that dictatorship is just around the corner. But it’s this White House that has the drop-dead obvious authoritarian instincts.

This is a report about the book promoted at this web site:

Jan 30, 2010 / 10:55 am (CNA).- CNA recently reviewed “Fatherless,” a book that has been dubbed “the Catholic novel of our generation.” The book, however, isn’t simply just story, author Brian Gail says of his work, “I’m hopeful that the unrest which courses through its pages will spark something that will contribute to a renewal of the Catholic Church in America.”

Gail, a former Madison Avenue ad-man, semi-pro athlete, and father of seven first attempted to write a memoir. But he threw it away after the first chapter. “It was just awful,” he told CNA. “When I sat down to start again, a tale about a priest emerged. Nothing could have surprised me more.”

The result is “Fatherless,” a serious Catholic novel already in its third printing from Dayton, Ohio’s One More Soul.

It is that tale about a priest that is attempting to change the world. Gail says his book, which is at times a fictionalized version of his family’s experiences, was guided by the Holy Spirit in a specific direction: “the re-run of Satan’s strategy in the garden of bypassing the family structure to deceive love and destroy unity.”

The novel takes place in the 1980s, what is referred to as “Morning in America. The plot centers around a parish priest and three families in his parish. Fr. John Sweeney is not the brightest, but he is sincere, devout, and does not lack in charity. The families that come to him for advice and direction are concerned with moral issues that time has proven lead America to the crux of her moral quandary in the current decades.

The central struggle that every character, especially Fr. Sweeney, faces is the balance of being a good father. The phrase “tough love” gathers a new meaning when Fr. Sweeney has to choose between his instinct to telling people what they want to hear, or what will make them temporally happy and the harsh truth which will eventually lead them to heaven. Set in the backdrop of a culture promising pleasure and the direct and precise teachings of Pope John Paul II on truth, “Fatherless” as a novel is both very real and very blunt.

The struggles that that characters face result from the cultural revolution of the 60s. This moral decline took place “through the two headed worm inside the apple called ‘progress.’ One head, ‘porn,’ promised entitlement; the other, the ‘pill,’ promised anonymity,” explained Gail. “The net effect was to systematically destroy the foundation of society, the family, and drain an entire generation of its moral energy.” “Empires fall when their people can no longer bridge the gap between what their technology permits them to do and what their hearts tell them they ought do,” Gail noted.

Gail cited Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” as a model for his book. “’The Jungle’ produced such ‘unrest’ that when President Theodore Roosevelt read it prior to publication he sent a team of men to the Chicago Stockyards to assess whether the inhumane conditions were actually as bad as the novel portrayed. The men reported they were worse. Within 30 days, Roosevelt had legislation before Congress for the establishment of the FDA.”

“I’m not so naïve to believe something similar will happen as a result of the publication of ‘Fatherless.’ But I’m hopeful the ‘unrest’ which courses through its pages will spark something that will contribute to a renewal of the Catholic Church in America,” he said. …

Go here for the rest of CNA’s story.

Congrats to those who defeated the $174 million referendum by what appears to be a convincing 62%-38% margin.

Now do something about the indoctrination going on there.

Here’s how Uncle Sam’s collections went in the seventh month of “Rebound? What Rebound?” (2010′s “other” is estimated; sources are the Jan. 29, 2010 and Jan. 30, 2009 Daily Treasury Statements, and the January 2009 Monthly Treasury Statement figure, as revised):

January 2010 also came in 21.6% below January 2008, as revised.

Elaboration really isn’t necessary, is it?

Note: This was originally posted shortly after midnight, and has been carried forward so it will be closer to the top today.

UPDATE: Matt Hurley at Weapons of Mass Discussion, posted at 10:24 p.m. Monday evening –

Did ORP Really Call Cops on Tea Partiers?

My sources say yes.

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Just found this. Watch:

Text of the YouTube info (spelling corrected):

Columbus Tea Party protest of closed-door endorsement of David Yost for State Auditor. Republican party bosses pushed him out of Attorney General race. Constitution-loving Ohioans get gun-hating RINO Mike DeWine. Patriots support CPA Seth Morgan. Yost should go back to AG race. End tyranny!!! No more RINOS!!!

Towards the end of the vid, the degree of police presence isn’t clear, but it’s clear that police are present.

Here are the early paragraphs of the report from the Dayton Daily News’s Bill Hershey report on tonight’s events:

The Ohio Republican Party endorsed Dave Yost, Delaware County prosecutor, for state auditor on Monday, Feb. 1, but state Rep. Seth Morgan, R-Huber Heights, remains in the race for the nomination, said Rob Scott, Morgan’s campaign spokesman.

“I am pleased and humbled to have this endorsement,” Yost said in a press release. “I know the challenge ahead of me to fill the shoes of Mary Taylor is huge. I’ll work hard to keep a conservative in that office and put together a campaign to win.”

“Dave Yost would have been a great attorney general,” Scott said in a press release. “The Ohio auditor’s office is not a bargaining chip to be played for nor is it an office for someone who concedes to political pressure.”

About 30 critics of the decision to endorse Yost demonstrated outside the party meeting at GOP headquarters in Columbus, party spokesman John McClelland said in an e-mail.

“We are a big tent party and sometimes people have disagreements. I talked with some people and they were very cordial,” said McClelland.

Mark Haverkos of West Chester in Butler County, who helped organize the demonstration, said demonstrators had backed Yost for attorney general.

A DDN commenter claimed a crowd of 42.

Here’s most of the AP’s coverage:

The Ohio Republican Party has endorsed a county prosecutor as its candidate for state auditor.

Party officials said Monday that David Yost will be their candidate for the statewide office, which opened up when Auditor Mary Taylor announced she would be the running mate for Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich.

Yost was selected over Republican state Rep. Seth Morgan.

Yost, a prosecutor in Delaware County north of Columbus, only recently moved into the auditor’s race, dropping a bid for attorney general.

State Committee member Teri Morgan said Yost has the ground game in place to run an effective statewide race and has strong conservative credentials. ….

There’s a missing ironic nugget in this (“White House budget cut to charitable deduction alarms philanthropists and non-profits”), which is the likely high percentage of philanthropists and non-profit execs who voted for Obama in 2008.

That’s another set of “shocked” elites to add to this list.

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Hmm (via Instapundit) — “Virginia’s Democratic-controlled state Senate passed measures Monday that would make it illegal to require individuals to purchase health insurance, a direct challenge to the party’s efforts in Washington to reform health care.”

In evaluating this, it would seem that there are two choices: Cynical, on-the-ropes Dems worried about maintaining their majority passed a meaningless symbolic bill so they could say “See, see, I’m really on your side!” Or, Virginia is moving closer to being the land of liberty lovers. Readers can make the call.

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My latest BigJournalism post (“Wire Watch: AP’s ‘Exclusive’ on Flight 253 Proves It Erred in Revising Original Reports; So Why Were They Scrubbed?”) is here.

It addresses AP’s “exclusive” report (link is to copy of that report saved to host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) recounting what happened in the hours after the arrest of Flight 253′s thwarted terrorist almost a month after the original event — a report that vindicates its original reporting and calls into question the truth-scrubbing that occurred in the ensuing days.

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Government takeover: “Largest-ever federal payroll to hit 2.15 million.”

A Lucid Links item on January 21 (last one at link) had the workforce in 2008 at 2.7 million based on a reference to “Executive Branch Civilian Jobs” this U.S. Office of Personnel Management web page.

Anyone who can explain the difference is welcome to do so in the comments or via e-mail.

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There’s so much discrediting of the ClimateGate perpetrators and apologists out there that it’s impossible to keep up. What follows is only a sampling, with some coming from a place that has heretofore been mostly sympathetic with globaloney:

• UK Guardian — “Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws”
• UK Guardian — “Strange case of moving weather posts.” “The Guardian has learned that crucial data obtained by American scientists from Chinese collaborators cannot be verified because documents containing them no longer exist. And what data is available suggests that the findings are fundamentally flawed.” Looks like nore “The Dog Ate My Global Warming” memory-hole work.
• The UK Independent finds that paranoia strikes deep — “So all these climate revelations were a dastardly foreign plot.” According to the UK Guardian, the person making the allegations, a certain David King, has admitted to having no basis for them.
• UK Telegraph — “UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and (mountainerring) magazine article.”
• UK Telegraph — “Stern report was changed after being published — Information was quietly removed from an influential government report on the cost of climate change after its initial publication because supporting scientific evidence could not be found.”
• UK Times Online — “Climate chief was told of false glacier claims before Copenhagen.”
• UK Times Online — “UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim.”

Note that stories continue to pour forth from the UK, while the U.S. establishment press pays virtually no attention, despite documented evidence (in briefer form at Pajamas Media) that NOAA and NASA were complicit in data manipulation:

The startling conclusion that we cannot tell whether there was any significant “global warming” at all in the 20th century is based on numerous astonishing examples of manipulation and exaggeration of the true level and rate of “global warming”.

That is to say, leading meteorological institutions in the USA and around the world have so systematically tampered with instrumental temperature data that it cannot be safely said that there has been any significant net “global warming” in the 20th century.

At this point, anyone who bitterly clings to globaloney as “settled science” is either a scoundrel or a fool.

From Cleveland, and (yes) Arlington National Cemetery:

Updated: Sunday, 24 Jan 2010, 3:23 PM CST
Published: Sunday, 24 Jan 2010, 3:23 PM CST

Ray Vivier had been an adventurer, a Marine veteran who explored the country from South Carolina to Alaska, the father of five children.

The 61-year-old also was a man starting to get his life back together after living for years in a shanty beneath a Cleveland bridge. He had struggled with alcoholism, but by November he had a welding job, friends and a place to stay at a boarding house.

He rescued five people from that house when arsonists set it ablaze — but Vivier couldn’t save himself. He and three others died, and two people have been charged in their deaths. Vivier’s body, unclaimed and unidentified for weeks, seemed destined for an anonymous, modest burial.

However, Jody Fesco — who met Vivier while she was volunteering at a soup kitchen and had even invited him to her wedding — heard that Vivier may have died. Fesco and her husband contacted their friend Haraz Ghanbari, an Associated Press photographer, about the situation. Ghanbari took the lead to make sure Vivier wasn’t forgotten, tracking down the family members and arranging a proper funeral.

On Friday, Vivier’s ashes were inurned at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

“You can see from what he did that he definitely had a good heart,” said Mercedes Cruz, Vivier’s ex-wife of 23 years, who attended the funeral with the couple’s children. “No matter what our difficulties were in our marriage, I’m very proud of what’s happened.”

For his grown children — who now are scattered around the country — Vivier had been gone for about 15 years. They know of his heroism now — but they don’t know much about the man he was trying to become. They remember their dad’s struggles with alcohol and other troubles.

“What I’m trying to get out of this is to have one good, concrete memory that I can have of him for what he did to save those people,” said his oldest daughter, Elisha Vivier. “I’m proud of the man that he was becoming.”

Go here for the rest of the story.