How do you get a better air safety record? Try not crashing first.

The New York Times reported that outside the United States the Federal Aviation Administration is considered a "role model" and "first-rate regulator," because it has the lowest accident rate in the world. The Times' viewed regulation rather than market based innovation as the solution to accident rates in foreign countries.

In Latin America, "accidents number one for every 600,000 flights" and "Africa is the least safe region in the world for air travel, with one accident for every 244,000 flights," said the Times.

One source, Giovanni Bisignani, secretary general of the International Air Transport Association, lamented the "the lack of a common regulatory framework" and failure to live up to standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations specialized agency.

But the success of accident records in the United States doesn't lie solely in regulation. Safety looks good to consumers too.

They may not have food to put on their tables, but at least Cuban citizens can text message about it now.

CBS's "Early Show" gave a fairly glowing report from the May Day celebration in Havana, Cuba, May 1, on changes Cuban President Raúl Castro has made in the country. Reporter Elizabeth Palmer called the leader's brother, Fidel Castro, a "revolutionary hero."

Fidel Castro handed provisional power to Raúl Castro, his younger brother, in July 2006. Raúl Castro officially took over the presidency in February 2008 after Fidel Castro fell ill.

Anchor Russ Mitchell said the May Day celebrations in Cuba signaled a "new era" for the country, and Palmer touted reforms like "cell phones," "text-messaging," opening of "resort hotels" to Cuban citizens and "shiny new Chinese buses."

High food prices may be affecting middle-income families, but an anecdotal report on CBS's "The Early Show" April 28 made the situation seem as if one family's use of a food bank was "the new face of hunger."

CBS reporter Priya David highlighted Pablo and Ada Melecio, a couple who recently lost their jobs and have elected to use a food bank to make ends meet. Ada Melecio said their "mortgage payments started falling behind and all the interest on that plus all the credit cards" were making their situation even worse.

Dan Gainor appeared on Fox News's "Fox and Friends" to talk about the latest issue of Time magazine, which had a Photoshopped cover of World War II Marines raising a tree instead of the American flag at Iwo Jima.

Gainor told viewers of the Saturday morning broadcast April 19, "Time magazine basically tried to co-op an icon of American heroism to push their global warming agenda. They're trying to claim that their war against global warming is similar to what our veterans endured during WWII."

He went on to say that there were 28,000 casualties and more than 6,000 people killed at Iwo Jima, exclaiming, "That's real war."

The average American will receive a $2,500 tax refund this year, a statistic that left CBS “The Early Show” host Harry Smith “stunned” on the April 11 broadcast.

“I am stunned to know what the average refund is,” Smith said. “$2,200 [in 2007], that’s too much, right?”

“It is too much,” said Money magazine senior writer Janice Revell.

She explained that the checks actually represent an interest-free loan between the government and taxpayers.

“When you get your refund it feels like this big windfall, you’ve won the lottery, but in essence what you’ve done is you’ve loaned your money, interest-free, to Uncle Sam for the year,” Revell said. “It just makes no sense.”

You're going to need a few extra bucks to pay for those corn flakes every morning.

CNN's senior business correspondent Ali Velshi let viewers in on an underreported fact about rising commodities prices: the government mandate for ethanol production is making corn and other agricultural products more expensive-making inflation a top priority for Americans.

"Several years ago, we made some decisions about how corn is going to be used to make ethanol, which is added to our gasoline," said Velshi on "American Morning" April 4. "A number of people think that that was meant to reduce our dependency on crude oil. What is does is it takes what is fundamentally a food source and makes it into a gasoline source. That's caused corn to go up."

After anecdotal reports that people who used the allergy drug Singulair may develop suicidal tendencies, the Food and Drug Administration announced March 27 that it would investigate. How big the problem might be depends on what network you watch.

Even though CBS's "The Early Show" and NBC's "Today" included statements from Merck (NYSE:MRK), the manufacturer of Singulair, analysis of the investigation was mixed.

If you haven't gotten to check out the Business & Media Institute's new weekly video blog, The Biz Flog, this week's topic is the media's shift from reporting on "recession" to all-out "depression."

Complete with old-timey piano music and grainy film, this week BMI gives you our take on the many instances when reporters have compared the current economy to a time when soup lines and the Dust Bowl carried headlines.

Business & Media Institute Director Dan Gainor appeared on the Fox Business Network January 31 to discuss reasons why The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) revenue numbers decreased recently - saying that its product is the problem.

"People have lost confidence in the media according to most studies...Most Americans understand that the...mainstream media are overwhelmingly liberal, overwhelming out of touch with a lot of their issues," Gainor said.

Gainor cited an instance where the Times was ran a story about veterans being more violent when they come back to the United States - turning "anecdotes into a loosely connected story and when you do that you alienate readers. They're the people that the Times work for. Journalists forget that."

Who is the biggest climate sinner? Not China, says the AP.

The Associated Press reported November 7 an interest group's findings that Saudi Arabia and the United States are the worst "climate sinners" for not taking drastic attempts to cut carbon emissions. But it accepted the group's "relatively positive" assertion that China's emission growth will slow in the future.

The news wire story picked up by USA Today reported that Saudi Arabia was the biggest sinner because its policies block attempts to curb greenhouse gases and the U.S. was second because it refuses to sign the Kyoto Treaty.

Where did China rank? 17th.

Business & Media Institute Director Dan Gainor appeared on the Fox Business Network December 6 to discuss how the media is choosing sides in the subprime housing problem.

"All throughout this whole year and actually if you go back in the last year and before [the media] have been pointing out that the lenders are the bad guys...CBS News who actually did an okay report last night, then the example they use is someone who has a 6.6% adjustable rate adjusting up to 9.6%, they've got a house the size of a mansion and they've got horses."

Gainor said the important thing that journalists fail to do is to get both the lenders and the home buyer's viewpoints.

The Robin Williams movie "R.V." may be obnoxious but it was nothing compared to an "NBC Nightly News" story last night.

Tailgating the New York Times, "Nightly News" worried on December 3 that America is traveling down the road to recession, because R.V. sales are projected to decline by about 5 percent in 2008.

"Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams honked his horn saying, "when R.V. sales go down, the U.S. economy often follows."

Correspondent Lee Cowan explained "that Wall Street has been tailgating [the R.V. industry] for signs of a possible recession."

When business goes green, interest groups get mean.

National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" gave a report November 30 on misleading "green" products, charging companies with "The Six Sins of Greenwashing."

"You may have thought they were environmentally friendly just because the product says so, but some environmentalists think you're being ‘greenwashed,'" said host Steve Inskeep. "Is one of the sins just lying, then, basically?"

Scot Case of the environmental marketing firm TerraChoice conveyed that "the biggest sin [they] found ... was called ‘The Sin of the Hidden Tradeoff' for products that promote a single issue ... but there are a wide variety of environmental considerations."

TerraChoice evaluated 1,018 retail products for their environmental claims and only one was found to be without sin, while the rest were guilty of offenses like "The Sin of the Lesser of Two Evils," "The Sin of Fibbing" and "The Sin of No Proof."

So, what's TerraChoice's solution?

Remember when you were a kid and all you had to do was cry "wolf" to get your parent or guardian to come to your aid? Well, apparently that doesn't work anymore.

Thanksgiving air travel went well; in fact it went so well it prompted CNN anchor Rob Marciano to exclaim, "Maybe the media sufficiently scared everybody."

CNN's "American Morning" and NBC's "Nightly News" reported the good news on Thanksgiving air travel, with CNN's Kiran Chetry saying it "wasn't so bad" and NBC's Amy Robach calling it a "relatively easy experience."

But both broadcasts forgot an important detail: military air space opened up by President Bush along the East Coast.

ABC's "World News Sunday" gave credit where credit was due - but left out a key point.

"Those express lanes, allowing flights to detour through military air space along the East Coast, also worked," said ABC's Jeremy Hubbard, forgetting to mention that Bush had authorized the air traffic change.

If you can buy sperm or eggs, why are kidneys so radical to ABC? And what happens to the people who are dying if we don't change the system?

ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson" called a doctor's market driven approach to organ donation, in which individuals could sell kidneys to insurers, "radical" November 19.

"Now an outspoken doctor is proposing a radical solution, allow donors to sell one of their kidneys," anchor Gibson began.

University of Minnesota Children's Hospital's Dr. Arthur Matas supported a regulated market only for kidneys and has said that ruling out kidney sales completely is like sentencing some patients to death.

Bad economy! Bad, bad, bad economy!

Business & Media Institute director Dan Gainor appeared on ‘Fox Business Live' November 15 to discuss the media's focus on the negative parts of the economy. Two of the networks, NBC and CBS led with positive news of the year's second best day of the year, but then focused on high gas prices this week.

"It goes beyond ‘it bleeds, it leads.' This is a consistent theme we've been watching for several years...Any time you have any sort of negative news they hype that and any sort of positive news, they undercut it," said Gainor.

As oil flirts with $100 a barrel, guess who is getting gold stars for reporting ... NPR.

National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" stories on $100 a barrel oil this week have featured some underreported views on the industry: The economy is surviving the higher costs, and the oil companies are using the profits for future exploration.

Reporter Jim Zarroli told NPR listeners what was supposed to happen, saying, "Time and again, economists from Alan Greenspan on down have warned that oil prices are inflationary ... Interest rates go up, borrowing becomes more difficult, and growth slows."

But, Zarroli also pointed out the unique trend that gets little coverage: Despite the rise in oil prices since March 2007, the economy has continued to grow at a strong pace.

There's more than one way to survive the rising cost of oil.

Is it time for more businesses to ‘go green'? Not so fast, says Director of the Business & Media Institute Dan Gainor.

Gainor appeared on CNBC's "Power Lunch" November 9 to discuss business investment in green products, a popular story on many news programs.

"The problem is companies are spending tons of green, going green...for some things, Wal-Mart has found some solutions that make a lot of sense, but then you look at Fed-Ex, they found that just going to hybrid trucks...were 75% more expensive," said Gainor.

You can watch the YouTube video after the break.

Huh, turns out all that effort the media put into bashing the airlines was [insert pun about airlines here]. Turns out they're doing pretty good. Oops.

"Airlines might not be doing as badly as it feels they're doing," said CNN's "American Morning" anchor Kiran Chetry after introducing a report November 6 on improved flight delays.

Remember Chetry reports from the New York bureau of CNN, that's important.

The CNN report revealed that the nation's 31 largest airports are actually down 8 percent over last year...except for one gridlocked city.

"Steer clear of New York where flight delays are up 23 percent," reporter Alina Cho said. "Even Chicago's O'Hare and Atlanta's Hartsfield airports, two of the world's busiest, posted improvements."