The Associated Press was very excited to learn that General Electric was going to return its $3.2 billion tax refund to the U.S. Treasury because the company was so embarrassed that it got such a giant refund this year. Why, it was so selfless of GE to be that public minded, AP thought. Only one problem. The story was a hoax and AP fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Early on Thursday a press release came from GE … or at least AP assumed it came from GE … that announced that the corporate giant was giving back its $3.2 billion tax refund. Saying that the company was “facing criticism over the amount of taxes it pays,” AP assumed that GE wanted to reverse the bad reputation it had earned for having skipped out on paying taxes for 2010.

Absurdly, the AP didn’t bother to check the facts on the initial claim of a $3.2 billion tax refund in the first place much less check to see if it was actually giving it back in the second place. Truth is neither happened. GE did not over pay its 2010 taxes by $3.2 billion in order to get any such refund. As Fortune Magazine reported soon after the false refund claim started making the rounds, GE did not get a refund and it did pay taxes for 2010.

Business Insider was quick to issue a point-and-laugh report that revealed that the Associated Press was bamboozled by a hoaxer. After snarking that “AP just fell for a hoax press release,” BI spells out the facts of the hoax.

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When reporter Steve Brown entered a meeting for the Milwaukee Democratic Party, he did what he always does in such a setting: He and his crew began silently setting up their equipment to grab footage for their report. But, within moments, he and his producer were called out by Sachin Chheda, the Chairman of the Milwaukee Democratic Party, who was at the microphone.

What ensued was a humiliating and degrading public berating of Mr. Brown because he happens to draw a paycheck from Fox News:

It almost seems as though the arrogantly grandstanding Chheda was reading directly off of the Media Matters website. He dutifully repeated the typical charges levied against the network’s parent company’s donation to the Republican Governor’s campaign PAC but at no time could he describe a single, objectionable or biased bit of reporting from the man standing in front of him.

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It’s not unusual for me to have the TV turned on when I’m working around the house and when the news comes on, it’s like liberal bias dressed up as white noise.  But there was one story last Friday that really caught my ear because the editorializing was even worse than the white noise I usually hear on the news. The story was from Brian Ross of ABC News reporting on a jet engine for a new fighter jet called the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Normally a subject like this would be far from my usual portfolio of junk science but I have been hearing a ton of ads about this on Washington, D.C., radio lately. And since I have family members that work in defense, my curiosity was piqued and I started poking around.

Let me set this up very quickly.  The Ross piece focused on what amounts to a fight between a couple of different corporations that each want to produce the engines for this new fighter jet.  The Pentagon seems happy with one particular engine – made by Pratt & Whitney – while there’s pretty strong sentiment in Congress to have two vendors for this engine, the second being a joint effort between General Electric and Rolls Royce.

I visited the ABC News website to check out the Ross piece in full and was immediately struck by the headline for the video package:

Pentagon Chokes on Pork

Aside from the gross imagery evoked by the headline, the sheer audacity of this naked editorializing really caught my attention.  Since when does ABC News get to decide what is and isn’t pork, not to mention the whole choking thing?  Within seconds of beginning to watch the story, the editorializing increased: (more…)