Other CNBC

Earlier today, NB's Lachlan Markey covered Bill O'Reilly's interview with the Fox Business Channel's Charles Gasparino.

In that interview, Gasparino confirmed what the New York Post reported in April of last year, namely that "GE Execs Encouraged CNBC Staff to Go Easy on Obama."

The suits at GE, including Chairman Jeff Inmelt, had a clear motivation for encouraging their reporters to lighten up, namely that "General Electric at the time was hoping to profit handsomely from policies that would benefit a few companies, including GE, at the expense of the majority of the economy"-- specifically cap and trade.

But speaking of motivation: What about former CNBCer Gasparino's?

The easy answer would be that sometime in the past two years he has seen the light and realizes his past reporting at CNBC was lacking in fairness and balance. Despite his move to Fox, there's reason to doubt that.

The network's revised and "clarified" report still fails to sufficiently inform readers. In fact, the new version seems to be the result of a meeting where the topic of discussion was: "What are the least informative changes we can make while being technically correct?"

On his show Thursday night, Levin referred to Cox's probably original version (now Google cached; copy saved here at my web host for future reference) addressing Deutsche Bank analysts' fears that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of the year will have a sharply negative economic impact. (For what it's worth, I prefer to describe what's coming as a plain-and-simple tax increase, simply because after what will have been eight years -- 2003 through 2010 -- everyone has long since gotten used to the current income tax structure.)

Here are the first two paragraphs of Cox's report as found by Levin and yours truly (bold is mine):

Fresh off his Tea Party cover story in the June 24 Weekly Standard, CNBC's Rick Santelli foresees what could be classified as an economic black hole for the United States of America.

On the network's June 24 broadcast of "Strategy Session," the CME Group reporter explained how the country could be headed down the same path and face the economic calamity the Japanese faced in what is known as the "lost decade." That period, from 1991-2000, was one which the Asian nation failed to grow economically despite countless efforts by the government to intervene. But as Santelli explained - the U.S. version of Japanese economic policies could result in Greek-style austerity measures.

"The notion that we are turning into Japan has been something talked about on this floor for probably a year and a half," Santelli said. "What changes though, is that it is now a toss up between Japan and Greece and trust me the eventual solutions or recommendations for avoiding the pitfalls of either are completely different strategies. A lot of Japanese say, ‘More Keynesian, more stimulus, spend, spend, spend, spend, spend.' And the other side of the equation says, ‘Well then, you are going turn into Greece.' Where does the truth lie? One thing I can tell you is, is that demographics are a big issue in this story as well. The Japanese have a demographic time bomb similar to the U.S. in terms of underfunded pensions and liabilities."

When viewers tune into watch CNBC's "The Kudlow Report," they may not anticipate a host interrupting conservative Republican Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.

But on CNBC's Nov. 24 "The Kudlow Report," fill-in host Simon Hobbs attempted to do just that. Hobbs, a regular on CNBC Europe, suggested there was nothing to emails unveiled after a hacker allegedly accessed the Climate Research Unit at University of East Anglia in Britain. These emails showed an effort by scientists, some on the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to manipulate data to strengthen the claim of anthropogenic global warming.

"You're well-known as a campaigner or man that believes humans are not the cause of global warming," Hobbs said. "I mean, specifically if you look at the coverage we have, the allegation is that the emails indicated that they were declining to share data with fellow scientists or they were seeking to keep other researchers with dissenting views from perhaps joining them on some platform. It doesn't indicate that the science was wrong or that the science was manipulated."

This could be dismissed as anti-human - but the theory the environment can be saved by encouraging the use of birth control is one that has been popular with media some environmentalists. 

CNN's Lou Dobbs certainly hasn't shied away from the idea. On his Sept. 21 broadcast, Dobbs revisited an early report that the true path to environmental salvation wasn't by curbing greenhouse gas, but instead by subscribing to a Malthusian theory that slowing the growth of human population was the best path.

"We have more tonight on a story that we first brought to you last month, Dobbs said. "There is new evidence of the negative impact of overpopulation on our environment. The biggest threat to the environment isn't, it turns out, gas-guzzling cars or power plants but rather having too many children all around the world."

Only $120.4 billion, or 15 percent of the gigantic $787-billion stimulus has been spent and some on the left, including Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, are already calling for Stimulus, Part II.

In an interview with CNBC Asia from the World Capital Market Symposium on the Aug. 10 broadcast of "Squawk Malaysia" Krugman said the stimulus that passed earlier this year was inadequate.

"We should be doing something to give the world, well give each of the major economies more of a jolt," Krugman said. "I mean, we've had these stimulus packages, but they were all inadequate. The United States, it was clear from day one that this wasn't going to be big enough."

At least one journalist isn't impressed by the health care initiatives of  the White House and congressional Democrats, and is warning of consequences should they succeed.

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo was on MSNBC's July 27 "Morning Joe" to preview her upcoming special "Meeting of the Minds: The Future of Health Care," set to debut on July 27. According to the Bartiromo, who also anchors "Closing Bell" and "Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo," much of the increased costs of health care could be prevented with changes in lifestyle and behavior.

"You know, I mean the issue is - 70 percent of the cost of health care is preventable disease. It's lifestyle, behavior," Bartiromo said.

Either "CNBC Reports" anchor Dennis Kneale has a flair for the dramatic or he upset a lot of people in the blogosphere with his biting critique of the blogosphere's negativity on the economy.

On the July 1 broadcast of "CNBC Reports," Kneale responded to harsh, angry criticism from bloggers - even pointing out blogs like the Huffington Post, with an openly left-of-center perspective.

"Last night on this show, I stirred up an angry hornet's nest in the blogs, you know, when I criticized their mean-spirited negativity, bashed them for hiding behind their cowardly cloak of anonymity," Kneale said. "And, I called them dickweeds, a form of pond scum. Well, they have howled with outrage throughout the blogosphere. Blog sites like Dealbreaker, Gawker, Huffington Post, the Business Insider, Zero Hedge and more have incited an online mob to rush to their defense."

Is there another shakeup imminent at CNBC? Since the economy has been on the rocks, NBC Universal's financial network has been in the spotlight - political tug-of-war and all. This time, another one of the network's star on-air personalities, Jeff Macke, could be out.

Macke had been a cynical, sometimes conservative voice on CNBC's "Fast Money" and in other CNBC and MSNBC appearances, often pointing out flaws in the Democrat-controlled political culture in Washington, D.C. Now, he could be following the same path his former colleague Dylan Ratigan, who left CNBC's "Fast Money" in March.

Jon Najarian, a CNBC contributor and co-founder of OptionMONSTER.com predicted as much in a May 21 post on his Twitter site.

BLITZER: What do you think of his (Obama's) decision to pick Joe Biden as his running mate?

TRUMP: I really don't know Senator Biden but I know one thing. He's run a number of times for president. He's gotten less than 1 percent of the vote each time. And that's a pretty tough thing. You know, he's also been involved in pretty big controversy like plagiarism in college and various other things. That's a pretty big statement. So perhaps you change over a period of time. But when you plagiarize, that's a very bad statement. That hasn't been brought up yet, but I'm sure at some point it will. I'm sure that Sarah Palin will bring it up in a debate or somebody's going to bring it up.

BLITZER: Are you talking about plagiarism when he was running for president?

TRUMP: No, I'm talking about when he was a college student as I understand it, and this was a big issue originally but he supposedly plagiarized as a college student. That's a pretty serious charge.

BLITZER: I don't remember that. We'll check it out. But maybe you obviously have a better memory about that.

John Stephenson at NewsBusters early this morning asked, “Will (the) Media Report Obama’s Mocking of McCain’s Disability?”

The answer is "I doubt it," at least beyond their blogs. Print edition or televised examples will be rare to non-existent.

Two other pertinent items will also probably be ignored:

• Bill Clinton's acknowledged lack of tech skills and virtual non-use of e-mail.
• More important, the high likelihood that the next President of the United States, like his two predecessors, will rarely, if ever, use e-mail.

NB commenter "mikej" at Stephenson's post did some web searching a falsely giddy Team Obama apparently didn't have the time for (or do they not know how?). "mikej" found the following January 28, 2004 CNN Reuters item carried at CNN.com about Bill Clinton's nearly non-existent e-mailing during his presidency (bolds after title are mine):

 On CNN's American Morning today, White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux reported on Barack Obama's campaigning in Virginia.  Afterwards, anchor Kiran Chetry had a question:

CHETRY: All right. And Suzanne, what's on tap for the campaign today? And please tell me it's not lipstick again.

MALVEAUX: Let's hope not. He's going to be in Norfolk, Virginia. That is in southeast Virginia, and it's home to the world's largest Naval base. It's one of the most competitive areas that the Democrats and Republicans are fighting over. It's a critical piece of property, piece of land there with folks in Virginia, and they want those voters.

Who says businesspeople can't get a fair shake from the media? Just ask Warren Buffett, who knows the secret recipe for media adoration: support Democratic candidates who advocate populist social programs.

Buffett, known as the "Oracle of Omaha," was interviewed in San Francisco prior to a fundraiser for Clinton. Reporter Becky Quick referred to this appearance as a "special cause."

"Today he is in San Francisco and he's here for a very special cause - campaigning, or actually trying to raise money for Hillary Clinton, who's running for president," Quick said.