Business Coverage

Bloomberg Businessweek and others are trying to capitalize on the difficulties United Parcel Service and to a lesser extent Fedex had in delivering packages in time for Christmas to claim that the U.S. Postal Service is coming out of it smelling like a rose ("An Unlikely Star of the Holiday-Shipping Season: The U.S. Postal Service"). Not so fast, people. Let's be extremely generous and take…

Concerning the Christmas shopping season, the Associated Press's Anne D'Innocenzio and CNBC's Krystina Gustafson agree: It has stunk. D'Innocenzio noted that "sales at stores have fallen for the third consecutive week as Americans continue to hold back on spending during what is traditionally the busiest buying period of the year." Gustafson, apparently looking over the same ShopperTrak data…

In an October 3 column at USA Today, economics correspondent Tim Mullaney pronounced "HealthCare.gov a winner despite glitches." Mullaney from all appearances has never retracted any of what he wrote that fateful day. He also defended himself vigorously in correspondence with yours truly during the week or so after my NewsBusters post critical of his writeup appeared. Accordingly, in light of…

Kelsey Snell "is a tax reporter at POLITICO Pro." Her output in a column entitled "Indiana lures 'Illinoyed' biz with tax breaks" makes one wonder how she arrived at her current position. Snell's piece is riddled with striking omissions and lame progressive talking points. But the most jaw-dropping element in her report is her clear inability to detect erroneous numbers which she and her…

As would be expected, Associated Press reporter Martin Crutsinger Wednesday treated Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's announcement that the nation's central bank will reduce the amount of money it creates out of thin air from $1.02 trillion per year to $900 billion, i.e., from $85 a month to $75 billion, as "its strongest signal of confidence in the U.S. economy since the Great Recession…

A South Dakota circuit court judge heard arguments on Dec. 17 from both sides in the lawsuit by Beef Products Inc. (BPI) against ABC News over its coverage of lean finely textured beef in 2012. Reuters reported that ABC’s lawyers asked for the $1.2 billion defamation suit to be dismissed “as the news outlet stood by its reports and cited free speech protections.” BPI, a South Dakota-based…

During a panel discussion on Amazon.com offering discounts to consumers who are parents -- a discount mechanism completely on the honor system since the company cannot verify claims of parenthood -- MSNBC The Cycle co-host Toure Neblett justified lying to take advantage of the discount, saying "nobody was getting hurt here." "If a lie is being told to a corporation, it's not really a lie,"…

Joe Scarborough highlighted a very important aspect of ObamaCare, one that has been too often overlooked by mainstream journalists, on Wednesday’s Morning Joe. During a roundtable discussion of the federal health care industry overhaul, Scarborough told everyone what he had been hearing from small business owners about ObamaCare: [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

On October 3, the National Retail Federation projected that "sales in the months of November and December" will "marginally increase 3.9 percent to $602.1 billion, over 2012’s actual 3.5 percent holiday season sales growth." But on October 16, it warned that "the average holiday shopper will spend $737.95 on gifts, décor, greeting cards and more, two percent less than the $752.24 they actually…

Since TransCanada proposed building the Keystone XL Pipeline in 2009, liberal actors, environmentalists, and the media have attacked the plan. Four years later, the media continue to work against the company that proposed building it, TransCanada and this time they had help. On Nov.12, CBS “Evening News” did a segment on repairs being made by TransCanada to the recently built section of the…

You would think that economic forecasters, who have been obsessing over the impact on economic growth of October's 17 percent partial government shutdown might have noticed that a lot of people have all of a sudden learned that they're about to experience a major cut in their take-home pay. You would be wrong. Hundreds of thousands of Americans had received health insurance cancellation…

The Associated Press has published a great but disturbing story. Given the frequent and deserved grief yours truly administers when the wire service lets its readers, listeners, viewers, and subscribing news organizations down, it seems only fair to acknowledge fine work when it does occur. The real question is, in the politically charged U.S. health care environment, whether the AP's…

After NBC warned viewers that the partial government shutdown that ended weeks ago may be "the Grinch that stole Christmas," on Tuesday's Today, correspondent Stephanie Gosk fretted that Thanksgiving would be ruined as well: "Macy's, the company that sponsors the Thanksgiving Day Parade, will open its doors on the holiday for the first time in 155 years....But there is a risk, the identity of one…

The Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro has put the country back into the expropriration business, seizing two oil rigs owned by Houston-based Superior Energy Services. Two different Friday headlines at Associated Press stories about the seizures, one at the AP's national site and the other at the Washington Post, appeared designed more to mislead than to inform.