Business Coverage

In a report for Thursday's NBC Today, correspondent Peter Alexander promoted attacks on Mitt Romney: "There's been no let-up in the barrage of criticism over Romney's record as the former head of Bain Capital." Alexander pointed out: "This Gordon Gekko impersonator greeted Romney's arrival in South Carolina." A scene from the movie "Wall Street" was played with actor Michael Douglas…

In November 2011 it became public knowledge that the Chevy Volt could possibly catch fire weeks after a serious accident. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened its investigation into the matter on Nov. 25. Now General Motors is trying to recall all of the Volts for "enhancements," all while attempting to avoid the word recall. ABC and NBC are also avoiding that…

It's more than a little annoying to read a news report containing incomplete information. The irritation level hits the red zone when you realize that the writer is not only concealing important data, but telling you what you're supposed to think about what little he deigned to tell you. Such was the case with Martin Crutsinger's Associated Press item about the Consumer Credit report issued…

A frequent BizzyBlog commenter tweeted about an online article he saw at CNNMoney.com entitled "Doctors going broke" about how many doctors are struggling in the current economy. His tweet: "Welcome to Obamacare." A frequent BizzyBlog commenter tweeted about am online article he saw at CNNMoney.com entitled "Doctors going broke" about how many doctors are struggling in the current economy.…

Even with recent "improvements" which are still weak when compared to other post-World War II recoveries and which, as shown yesterday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), are less substantive than December's two major reported numbers (unemployment rate of 8.5% and seasonally adjusted job additions of 200,000) would indicate, it seems fairly likely that the nation's unemployment rate will be higher…

A few readers asked me for my reaction to Derek Kravitz's December 23 report at the Associated Press on new-home sales. I thought that it was reasonably good, but felt that his leaving open in readers' minds the idea that this year's sales could conceivably top last year's was in bad form. I was too kind. Based on data available elsewhere, Kravitz should have known (and maybe did) that…

This is the seventh year I have looked into how the media treats two Christmas-related topics: The use of “Christmas shopping season” vs. “holiday shopping season” and the relative frequency of "Christmas" and "holiday" layoff references. Unfortunately, the hints of improvement late last year, when 20% of stories in the late December pre-Christmas search referenced the "Christmas shopping…

Yesterday at my home blog, in the wake of Uncle Sam's reduction of third-quarter growth in gross domestic product (GDP) from an annualized 2.0% to 1.8%, I predicted that the establishment press's reaction would be the following: “Yeah, but the fourth quarter will be 3% or more. It really, really will be. Please believe us.” Martin Crutsinger at the Associated Press made that easy prediction…

See-no-evil economic reporting during the Obama years has "somehow" missed a number of developments in the makeup of the American workforce which I believe would not have been missed (or deliberately overlooked, take your pick) if a Republican or conservative were in the White House. One of them relates to full-time employment. Did you know that seasonally adjusted full-time employment in…

Late Friday afternoon, Todd Shields at Bloomberg News broke a story about some guy, who happens to be an Obama and Democratic Party donor (but not disclosed), against whom the Securities and Exchange Commission is formally considering an enforcement action (also not disclosed, though it was noted at the New York Times's Dealbook Blog five hours before Shields's report), whose "wireless service…

Today's Advance Monthly Retails Sales Report for November from the Census Bureau came in with a seasonally and shopping-day adjusted 0.2% increase over October. Analysts expected 0.6%, and a whole host of them described the result as "disappointing," as shown here in a Google News Search for the past 24 hours on ["retail sales" disappoint"] (typed exactly as indicated between brackets; as of 6:…

Each year the Business & Media Institute looks back on the year's news and selects the top 10 worst economic myths. This year the media's myths were wide-ranging: from conspiracy theories about economic sabotage, to overpopulation panic and Occupy Wall Street's mantra "We are the 99 percent." Here is our 2011 list:

A false Huffington Post claim that Fox Business Network’s Eric Bolling called the Muppets “communist” quickly spread to other news and entertainment outlets on Dec. 5. A segment on the latest Muppet villain, oil tycoon Tex Richman, was quickly twisted by the left into an attack on Fox and showed where news organizations and comedy shows get their information.  In the movie, the Muppets are…

For conservatives, one of the bright spots of the Occupy Wall Street protests was when millionaire investor Peter Schiff went down to Zuccotti Park with video camera and a sign reading "I Am The 1% - Let's Talk." On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of speaking with Schiff by telephone in a sweeping interview about his experience at OWS, how the financial media are doing, and ending with his rather…