Business Coverage

Feeling a little bailout fatigue? Tired of the assault on the taxpayer from the federal government to pacify those influenced by the United Auto Workers? CNBC's Larry Kudlow feels your pain. Call this red meat for the troubled anti-bailout soul. Kudlow, now performing a role as a co-host on CNBC's mid-morning program "The Call," blasted the Union Auto Worker, President George W. Bush, Treasury…

It's special treatment for automakers, according to a former airline executive. Gordon Bethune, the former CEO of Continental Airlines (NYSE:CAL), now a CNBC contributor, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Dec. 19 the political process is being substituted for what otherwise should be a bankruptcy judge in determining the fate of the big three automakers. "Wow, what makes them exempt from reality?…

Just how bad is the economy? ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson" went all the way to Edwardsburg, Mich. to find out.  The Dec. 18 broadcast of "World News" highlighted a new economic indicator - the increase in the number of people willing to lend their body to science for money. "We're going to turn next to some of the extreme measures that some Americans are taking because of the…

Full disclosure, you can take the day off. CBS's "The Early Show" included a statement in its Dec. 18 report on the Big 3 bailout from "auto industry analyst," Dan McGinn. Letting the massive car companies fail "would be like 10 Katrinas hitting America at the same time," McGinn asserted. "The American public understands that." What the report didn't say is that McGinn is also an adviser…

In an attempt to play Main Street against Wall Street, Rachel Maddow mocked and criticized the rate at which Goldman Sachs was taxed this year. The MSNBC host of "The Rachel Maddow Show" lamented that the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which reported a $2.12 billion dollar loss for the fourth quarter ending Nov. 28, paid only 1 percent in taxes for the entire year during her Dec. 18 show. "Five…

No, it's a not a story from the Onion. It's AFP reporting on the actions of Associated Press photographers and journalists:US news agency staff stage 'byline strike' Journalists and photographers at the US news agency the Associated Press (AP) are withholding their bylines to protest management's stance in contract talks, their union said. "Staffers recognize the tough times, but they also…

Rupert Murdoch has his critics - from those who think his papers are too tabloid-ish - The Sun, The New York Post - to those who find his cable television networks too right-leaning for their tastes. And back in 2007, there was a fear that his purchase of The Wall Street Journal would result in a hybrid of his newspapers and his cable news channels. However, a year after Murdoch's acquisition,…

Burger King is an Ugly American corporate villain that has raped the "pristine digestive systems" of so-called Whopper Virgins the world over.Sounds like an Onion article, right? Try the Chicago Tribune:Burger King's "Whopper Virgins" ad campaign is the company's latest salvo in its long food fight with rival McDonald's. But it appears to have missed the mark. Critics have heaped a super-size…

The Chicago company that was the site of a six-day worker sit-in has filed for bankruptcy. Though this appears to have been expected, it seems that many aspects of this story went under-reported or unreported. The Chicago Sun Times story written by Francine Knowles and Sandra Guy makes it appear that Bank of America, the lender whose refusal to extend a credit line allegedly caused the company's…

All is fair in love and war ... and environmentalism. A Greenpeace advertisement attacking the fishing industry that was posted on YouTube Dec. 3 spells out doom and gloom for a type of Pollock if action isn't taken soon. "Alaskan Pollock are being overfished," the voice in the TV spot said. "They're the source of everything from fish sandwiches to fish sticks. Overfishing of Canadian cod…

President-elect Barack Obama named Carol Browner the "czar" of climate and energy policy for the White House, but CNBC's Joe Kernen was wary of her appointment. "You can see that even in Europe, some of the climate concerns, given this, this once in a lifetime recession, John - to put someone that, an advocate of such strong measures," Kernen said on "Squawk Box" Dec. 11. "Really I've seen her…

Vice President for the Business & Media Institute, Dan Gainor, spoke with Gretchen Carlson, host of "America's News HQ," about the decline of media and particularly newspapers. "The model for media in general is not working. We had a great model for a long time for networks, great model for print, nobody's been able to come up with a way to deal with the internet and make a ton of cash just…

If print is becoming journalism's dying backwater, Paul Krugman isn't showing it. In a Dec. 6 interview in Stockholm, Sweden, the Nobel Prize-winning New York Times columnist told the ironically named Adam Smith, editor-in-chief of Nobelprize.org, that he found himself more effective in his role at the Times lately He said he was more influential in shaping policy as a journalist than he would…