BusinessWeek

A hit job on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the Dec. 5-11 Bloomberg Businessweek accepts the liberal mantra that corporations are evil and buy support through shadowy groups. The five page article, "Pssst … Wanna Buy a Law?," is thick with one-sided caricatures of conservative policies could have easily been written by a left-wing blogger.

ALEC is a non-profit that promotes limited government, free markets, and federalism. The do this "through a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America's state legislators, members of the private sector, the federal government, and general public."

The “Cash For Clunkers” bill that became law on June 24, “has a lot of squeaks and rattles” according to Business Week, but the main stream media has ignored these and instead praised and promoted it.

The law was meant to promote smaller, more fuel efficient cars by subsidizing dealers to buy back gas guzzlers so that drivers could buy environmentally friendly cars. It fails in practice, according to the July 13 & 20, 2009 issue of the magazine, and may even do the exact opposite of its purpose.

“The problem with the law is that it is both underfunded and too narrow to generate a spike in showroom traffic,” David Welch wrote in the July 13&20 edition of Business Week, “Plus, the law makes little sense for most passenger-car owners.”

That’s not how ABC’s “World News Sunday” portrayed the idea on June 14, before the bill even passed. The network compared it to a similar law in Texas, one that according to David Muir “has been a smashing success.”

“Advocates say it will clean up the environment and help the struggling auto industry,” Ryan Owens reported as he interviewed proponents of the plan. He didn’t interview anyone opposed to the bill.

Some call it "the dead tree edition" of the news media. But as 2009 dawns, trees may not be the only casualties.

Newspaper companies as an investment are less lucrative than they once were. Alan D. Mutter, a Silicon Valley CEO, pointed out on his blog that newspaper companies took a hit in 2008 in terms of share value to the tune of $64 billion.

"In the worst year in history for publishers, newspaper shares dropped an average of 83.3% in 2008, wiping out $64.5 billion in market value in just 12 months," Mutter wrote on Jan. 1. "Although things were tough for all sorts of businesses in the face of the worst economic slump since the 1930s, the decline among the newspaper shares last year was more than twice as deep as the 38.5% drop suffered by the Standard and Poor's average of 500 stocks."

Is it possible the financial media played a role in facilitating the alleged $50 billion Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme? An interesting theory by Jon Najarian, CNBC analyst and cofounder of optionMONSTER, contends that they very well may have unwittingly done just that. Madoff, he believes, used media publicity to lure investors to his scheme.

As Najarian explained on CNBC's Dec. 22 "Fast Money," Madoff got his reputation on Wall Street in the payment for order flow business. That's when a brokerage firm receives a payment as compensation for directing the order to the different parties that can execute the order at a lower cost.

"First of all you needed something that was very credible, because what he started off with was very credible," Najarian said. "As we both know, Dylan, he was in the payment for order flow business before anybody else. That meant folks that he was buying on the bid and selling on the offer back when the spread on NASDAQ stocks was 50 cents wide."

In other words, they would have to pay you to take what is rapidly becoming Manhattan's quaint little alternative newspaper off their hands.

Yesterday, New York Times Company stock closed at $5.72. That is, by far, its lowest close in the 22 years presented in this chart at Yahoo!:

Before today's opening bell, the company is worth $822 million,

Using conservatively adjusted numbers from a hysterically titled July 25 Business Week article about the company ("How Can The New York Times Be Worth So Little?"), I will show that the market currently sees the New York Times newspaper as literally being worse than worthless.

Here are the two key paragraphs from Business Week's original "analysis":

Well, I guess that settles it. We don't need any political discussion or economist's studies. The auto industry officially needs a bailout. It's just a fact. After all, MSNBC and BusinessWeek have just said it. The auto industry "needs" one or it cannot survive. Oh, yeah, and MSNBC is also informing the world that Republicans have told auto workers to "drop dead." I think this is what the Old Media calls "news."

This story by David Kiley of BusinessWeek is amazing for its assumptions, pronouncements and slanted anti-capatilist rhetoric and it boggles the mind that it could be called journalism. It certainly isn't "news" because of all the personal opinions that Kiley pads this thing with, anyway.

What if you could download a program that would scan, magically, any article written anywhere and expose the spin, bias, and misinformation? Would that interest you?

This is what a new program--SpinSpotter--coming to you from Seattle, WA, purports to do. Business Week reports:

The application's algorithms work off six key tenets of spin and bias, which the company derived from both the guidelines of the Society of Professional Journalists' Code Of Ethics and input from an advisory board composed of journalism luminaries.

As an attempt to find a new and innovative way to spread the doom-and-gloom news associated with the economic downturn, BusinessWeek magazine launched a recession blog on its Web site back in May to give a personalized glimpse into "recession" hardships.

"This blog is one of the places we'll tell these stories," BusinessWeek.com reporter Tim Catts wrote on the blog's first post on May 2. "Here, we'll jump into the conversation about where the economy is and where it's going. Yes, sometimes we'll look at the latest data. Sometimes we'll share observations from the road. The goal is to give readers real stories about how the downturn is affecting individuals, businesses, and communities."

However, activity on the blog has been scarce of late. Nearly three months later, there are just 22 posts. Meanwhile, the nation's Gross Domestic Product grew at a 1.9 percent pace for the second quarter of 2008, according to government estimates announced July 31.

If there were any doubt the media is trying to milk bad economic news for all that it's worth, look no further than BusinessWeek magazine.

BusinessWeek kicked off its "Recession in America" blog on May 2. It is dedicated solely to reporting on the "recession [that] is here (or will be soon)," as the headline of a May 19 post stated (h/t BMI advisor Chris Roush of Talkingbiznews.com).

"As the U.S. economy slows, the story is often told through broad statistics," the "about" section of the blog stated. "In this blog, BusinessWeek reporter Tim Catts travels the country to uncover the stories of how individuals are coping with the downturn."

Al Gore, who famously claimed to have invented the Internet, now denies –in the face of powerful evidence to the contrary— that he is in a position to make an immense fortune from global warming-mitigation efforts. Ian Wilhelm, a Chronicle of Philanthropy reporter, asked the private equity firm Generation Investment Management LLP (GIM) to respond to my latest post, The Media Ignore Al Gore's Planned Global Warming Profiteering.

 

By now you've probably read about how Al Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection plan to drop $300 million on hard-hitting affective propaganda aimed at convincing the American viewing public to embrace the drastically reduced standard of living that carbon emission controls guarantee.

The first ad from the campaign, narrated by Oscar-nominated actor William H. Macy, shows footage of Americans taking action by storming the beaches at Normandy during World War II, marching for civil rights, and landing on the moon. Americans didn't wait to take action at these critical points in the nation's history, so "we can't wait for someone else to solve the global climate crisis. We need to act and we need to act now. Join us. Together we can solve the climate crisis..."

♪♫ ♪ Say, say, one, nine, three, zero, party over, oops, out of time! So tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1929! ♪♫ ♪

It's the kind of rhetoric legislators in Congress were probably hearing following the economic downturn that occurred in 1929, which instigated the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 that sent U.S. tariff rates sky high. That is, the February 11 issue of BusinessWeek, showing all the disadvantages of free trade for the United States and ignoring the advantages.

An article, "Economists Rethink Free Trade," by BusinessWeek Washington Bureau Chief Jane Sasseen ignored the benefits of free trade and the consequences of enacting anti-free trade policies.

Are you a little skeptical when an economist or a financial strategist appears in the MSM, warning for the worst?

A look back at the Dec. 25, 2006, “Where to Invest” issue of BusinessWeek gave us a measuring stick to see how frequently cited “experts” shaped up in 2007 – including New York Times regular Ian Shepherdson, Moody’s Economy.com economist Mark Zandi and Standard & Poor’s Chief Investment Strategist Sam Stovall.

BusinessWeek surveyed 80 investment strategists about where the stock market would be at the end of 2007, and 58 economists on where gross domestic product (GDP) would be at the end of 2007.

Americans have fallen behind in science in math and can't compete globally, right? Well, not according to Vivek Wadhwa's October 26 BusinessWeek article, which the media have conveniently ignored.

For years, the media warned about US students' deficient science and math skills, but a report from the Urban Institute disputed those claims (all bold mine):

...math, science, and reading test scores at the primary and secondary level have increased over the past two decades, and U.S. students are now close to the top of international rankings. Perhaps just as surprising, the report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands.

BusinessWeek says the U.S. should learn a lesson from France about how to run health care. According to the July 9 issue:

“France also demonstrates that you can deliver stellar results with this mix of public and private financing,” wrote correspondent Kerry Capell.

Capell also called the French universal system “generous” and stated that it “offers valuable lessons for would-be health-care reformers in the U.S.”

Specifically referencing Michael Moore’s propaganda-mentary, Capell said the French system is not “quite as superb as Sicko maintains, but it’s pretty good.”

Socialist Dictator Hugo Chavez has seized private businesses in Venezuela and many Venezuelans are fleeing the country, yet BusinessWeek magazine found a silver lining:

“In some respects, business has never been better,” claimed Geri Smith in the June 25 issue.

Smith quoted Venezuelan American Chamber of Commerce President Edmond J. Saade who said:

“It’s a bit like the … French Revolution. Power to the people, death to nobility.”

In addition to asking ABC's chief climate alarmist Sam Champion about the snow-laden wind farm he surveyed today and what it says about "global warming," NewsBusters would love to hear the "Good Morning America" personality chalk 100 trapped sealing boats in Canada up to Americans who use too much fossil fuel and thereby warm the planet.

Here's just a few news sources covering the story:

Canadian seal hunters trapped by ice (BusinessWeek, April 19)

BusinessWeek praised "savvier media" for helping discredit global warming skeptics in an article focused on corporate support for carbon cap legislation, which will cost businesses and consumers.

"In addition, contrarians have taken a hit from a savvier media. Instead of just quoting a scientist on both sides of the debate, journalists increasingly have assessed the weight of the evidence and explained who was behind the opposing views," explained BusinessWeek in the April 23 issue.

The result was listed in the subhead of the story: "with the skeptics almost silenced." Note, it does not say silent. The skeptics still exist, and are still talking, but the media has "silenced" them.