Starbucks Burned by Media Criticism of Calories and Caffeine
July 9th, 2008 3:40 PM
Whether you are a Starbucks patron or not, no doubt you've heard that the Seattle-based coffee chain plans to close 600 "underperforming" stores and cut about seven percent of its workforce.Job loss is certainly not something to cheer about, yet Reuters found a unique story to tell on July 6, 2008. No, this wasn't the sad tale of roughly 12,000 soon-to-be unemployed baristas. It was a morbid…
CNBC's Gasparino Fires Back at Bear Stearns Rumor Charges
July 9th, 2008 10:32 AM
Although the collapse of Bear Stearns happened back in March, the debate still rages as to what led to the failure of the 85-year old investment bank that had survived years of previous turmoil, including the Great Depression. After JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon appeared on PBS's "The Charlie Rose Show" July 7 and commented on an August 2008 Vanity Fair article alleging that…
ISM Manufacturing Goes into Expansion Mode; AP Changes Subject
July 5th, 2008 1:28 AM
Earlier this week, to avoid "undue" emphasis on how much the situation has been improving in Iraq, the press, in search of bad news, switched its focus to Afghanistan (examples here, here, and here). Kyle Drennen and Warner Todd Huston at NewsBusters noted this on Tuesday. Similarly, Associated Press writer Ellen Simon, confronted with a key report showing economic improvement, decided that it…
Newspaper Ad Revenues Dive; No Media Self-Examination Evident
June 23rd, 2008 4:40 PM
In any other industry, when revenues fall steeply, those in charge take at least a casual look at the quality of their product, and try to get a grip on whether it's meeting consumers' needs and expectations. But that never seems to happen in the news business. True to form, the New York Times's Richard Perez-Pena devoted over 850 words to the latest developments, and had nothing to say about…
BMI’s Menefee: Countrywide Story ‘Has Everything,’ but Networks
June 23rd, 2008 3:11 PM
The network news outlets - ABC, CBS and NBC - have missed a great opportunity to cover actual political news in the last week by failing to report on the loan scandal surrounding two Democratic senators, Business & Media Institute Managing Editor Amy Menefee told "Fox & Friends Weekend" June 21."This story has everything," Menefee said. "It has a former presidential candidate, Chris Dodd…
WaPo Finds Lucrative Market in Giving Chinese Private Health Care
June 23rd, 2008 10:47 AM
Who says the Washington Post never reports the downsides of socialized medicine? In a story below the fold on the June 23 Business section front page, staffers Kendra Marr and Ariana Eunjung Cha took a look at how a Bethesda, Md., company is setting out to make money by capitalizing on dissatisfaction with China's socialized medical system. Marr and Cha look at how Bethesda-based Chindex…
Bad News Bias: A Tale of Three Economic Surveys
June 19th, 2008 5:42 PM
Survey question: If the media had the results of three independent surveys of corporate executives about the economy and two of them were more negative than the third, which one wouldn't get much coverage?In the last few days, three such surveys have been released. Two of them - the Business Roundtable's quarterly CEO Economic Outlook Index and the Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business…
AFP Item On U.S. Driving Is Both Econ- and Math-Challenged
June 19th, 2008 3:25 PM
It's not just the Associated Press that can't get basic facts right. No wonder Barack Obama doesn't get challenged by the media on fundamentals -- y'know, things like how many states there are in the union (he says 57 or so), whether Illinois is closer to Kentucky than Arkansas (he says it's not), or whether Warren Buffett's income (!) is $56 billion (Obama seems to think that income and net…
WaPo Prescribes Bias in Story on Pro-life Pharmacy
June 16th, 2008 11:50 AM
On the one hand, I have to give the Washington Post some credit for its biased June 16 story about a new pro-life pharmacy set to open in northern Virginia this summer. Even with its less-than-fair treatment, it informs pro-life readers of a new pharmacy they may wish to patronize. Of course the store opening is worthy of news coverage for a number of reasons, such as the intersection of faith…
AP CPI Story Paints Gloom and Doom; Market Reaction Is Opposite
June 13th, 2008 10:59 PM
The Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger got out the gloom-and-doom paint in his report on the Consumer Price Index on Friday morning. Here are his opening paragraphs: Inflation rate jumps by biggest amount in 6 months Inflation shot up in May at the fastest pace in six months, pushed higher by soaring costs for gasoline and other types of energy. The Labor Department reported Friday that…
Media Ignore Minimum Wage Hike's Impact on May Unemployment Rise
June 10th, 2008 11:44 AM
It certainly wasn't surprising how press outlets desperately trying to depict the economy as depression-like in order to get Barack Obama in the White House were practically giddy following the dour jobs report released by the Labor Department last Friday.What was shocking given the portion of May's unemployment rate rise attributed to high school and college students looking for summer jobs was…
Stunning Ignorance About 'Pink Slips' (Yet Again) from AP
June 7th, 2008 1:42 AM
The Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa started off her Friday evening report on the day's economic news showing, as she and her AP colleagues have for several months, that they either don't understand very basic concepts relating to the information they're attempting to digest and convey or are deliberately reporting it inaccurately: Pink slips piled up and jobs disappeared into thin air in May…
