Zimbabwe

LiveBlog: Bush Press Conference on the Economy

By Ken Shepherd | April 29, 2008 - 10:31 ET

President Bush is holding a press conference on the U.S. economy. I'll be blogging the questions to the president below.

Video of Bush/Raddatz clash here (audio available here).

Video of Stolberg and Ryan on recession here (audio here)

My bottom line analysis (11:25): The two R's of bias from this Rose Garden presser: Martha Raddatz on Syria and numerous reporters on the dreaded R-word, recession. Of course a recession is two consecutive quarters of NEGATIVE economic growth, and we've yet to see one quarter of negative growth, much less two. But all the same, NY Times's Stolberg made it sound like Q1 numbers on GDP tomorrow will show a recession.

The questions below will be posted in reverse chronological order:

Sky-High Gas Prices? Try 3,700 Percent Inflation

By Ken Shepherd | May 18, 2007 - 13:57 ET

As gas prices are on a springtime upswing and the summer driving season is upon us, NewsBusters and the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute have documented the media's persistent hype about gas prices.

But if the media really want a story about an economy running on fumes, they need look no further than Zimbabwe, where socialistic thuggery has resulted in a starving nation bedeviled with 3,700 percent annual inflation and electricity rationing.

Oh, things weren't always this bad. This time last year it was only at 1,000 percent inflation in Zimbabwe, and that's over 100 times worse than the single-digit "stagflation" that then-CNN contributor Andy Serwer feared just five months before the 2006 midterms.

WashPost Front-Pages Mugabe Violence Yet Doesn't Call Him a Dictator

By Ken Shepherd | March 17, 2007 - 14:17 ET

On the one hand, I have to give the Washington Post credit for frontpaging today's story on longtime Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe's campaign of police thuggery against opposition leaders.

Yet when I looked through the article, I found no mention that Mugabe is a socialist or leftist, nor was he labeled a dictator.

In fact, the only dictator reference came in a graph that noted that the latest high-profile victim of Mugabe's violence, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, has himself been accused by political rivals of having "dictatorial tendencies."

[more after the drop]