Bailouts

Does the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger moonlight as a Code Pink operative? There has to be something that explains what I'll call his Iraqnaphobia. Last month (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the AP reporter erroneously cited the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a "major factor" explaining why "the deficit has widened." In a quick review of the related June 2009 Monthly…

Ben Bernanke's able use of monetary policy to steer the economy during the current financial crisis sometimes makes it easy to forget that Bernanke helped steer the ship into that crisis early in his term as Federal Reserve Chairman and a member of the Fed's Board of Governors. That's a point Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) founder and CEO George Friedman made when asked the likelihood of…

State-controlled General Motors issued a supposedly comprehensive 8-K report to the Securities and Exchange Commission last Friday.If you only read the Associated Press's coverage of that document's release courtesy of reporter Tom Krisher, you would at least know that:The company doesn't expect sales to improve during the rest of the calendar year.That the $50 billion in post-bankruptcy funding…

Would you believe that Dan Rather is calling on former President George W. Bush to lead a blue-ribbon effort to reform the news media? Well, obviously, the disgraced ex-CBS News anchor is not trusting the future of journalism to Bush, but in an op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post, he is asking President Barack Obama “form a commission to address the perilous state of America’s news media.”Rather…

Times have been tough financially for media companies across the board and satellite radio has been no exception. On Aug. 6, Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ:SIRI) posted a second-quarter loss and the company hasn't lived up to expectations after Sirius and XM completed a merger a little over a year ago. According to "CNBC Reports" host Dennis Kneale, part of the satellite radio's problem is shock jock…

Chalk another one up to the law of unintended consequences. Last fall, the media promoted the $700-billion TARP bailout. During the weeks and months leading up to that bailout, they were also on board with cracking down on oil speculators for driving up the price of oil. But now it seems the TARP program is contributing to oil speculation. On Aug. 3, Richard Bernstein, CEO of Richard Bernstein…

A common theme of the new administration and their media minions is that all the problems associated with the economy and the rising budget deficits are George W. Bush's fault.On Sunday's "This Week," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said (video available here, relevant section at 9:40):Remember we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. The cumulative consequences of the policies this country…

Say what you want about the Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck and his antics, but to give credit where credit is due, he exposed some disturbing language from the Obama administration's "Cash for Clunker" program Web site Cars.gov. Beck on his July 31 program hosted a segment about the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) Web site, also known as "Cash for Clunkers" and demonstrated what a Web browser…

The zoo I'm referring to is the Franklin Park Zoo (FPZ), not the Massachusetts state legislature, although the slang version of the word's meaning likely applies there as well.As reported in a July 10 Boston Globe story, in reaction to Patrick's line-item veto of $4 million of the FPZ's $6.5 million annual subsidy, Zoo New England, which runs the FPZ's two zoo sites, ".... in a written statement…

As if the relationship between the Obama Administration and the news media weren't cozy enough already, former "CBS Evening News" anchor Dan Rather is calling on President Obama to "make recommendations" for the media on how to survive the economic downturn.  Rather spoke at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colo. on July 28 and addressed challenges to the news industry, which he described as…

[Update, 8:24 pm Eastern: Audio and video clips from the interview added.]CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was a bit surprised by Rudy Giuliani’s answer during Wednesday’s Situation Room, after asking the former mayor to reassess his prediction last year about “on-the-job training” for a President Obama. Blitzer inquired whether his “worst fears [had] come true.” Giuliani answered, “In many respects, it’s much…

PBS’s Jim Lehrer forwarded several questions with a clear leftward tilt during an interview with President Obama on his Newshour program on Monday. He urged the executive to “crack heads” to get his health care plan passed, and inquired if “taxing the wealthy” was an option to fund it. Lehrer later pressed Mr. Obama on the “huge profits” being made by “big Wall Street banks.”The PBS anchor led…