Business Coverage

If there was ever an obvious conflict of interest in economic reporting, this may very well qualify. NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell evaluated the housing crisis solution proposals of both Democratic presidential hopefuls Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) on the March 25 "NBC Nightly News." "Clinton was the first of the two to sound alarms about the…

CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer came under fire recently for telling viewers Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) wasn't in trouble just days before the investment bank tanked. He has finally admitted some fault. "No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble," Cramer said on his program March 11. "If anything, they're more likely to be taken over. Don't move your money from Bear." The following weekend,…

As media continue to report current economic conditions as being almost Depression-like, they conveniently forget which political party has controlled both chambers of Congress since January 2007 as well as who was in the White House when key financial services deregulation was enacted.Such a well-timed amnesia hit ABC's Claire Shipman Sunday when during the panel discussion segment of "This Week…

A fairly common media meme during the past year or so has been that the continually declining value of the dollar is driving up oil and gas prices (image courtesy Slate).In the past three months alone, there have been over 100 stories involving this very subject, including this March 10 piece from U.S. News & World Report entitled "Why Gas Prices Rise as the Dollar Falls (emphasis added):…

It's a common trick the media employ when reporting on "skyrocketing" gas price stories: show photos or B-roll of price marquees that bear prices way above the actual average price.MSNBC.com's front page this morning is no exception, as the screen cap at right shows regular unleaded for $3.979, or 21 percent higher than the national average of $3.27.The article's headline reads, "Rising gas costs…

He'd probably like to take this comment back, but then again there are probably many things CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer has said that he'd like to take back. In a response to an e-mail posted on his Web site on March 11, Cramer said Bear Stearns (NYSE:BSC) wasn't in trouble and advised the writer to keep his money in the investment bank: "Dear Jim: Should I be worried about Bear Stearns…

For more than a week, NewsBusters has been pointing out that media seem to be adopting the 1992 Bill Clinton playbook of presenting the economy as being in much worse shape than it really is.On Sunday, former Clinton administration adviser George Stephanopoulos took this doom and gloom posture by repeatedly depicting the nation as already being in a recession. In fact, he began the most recent…

Jim Cramer is known for wearing his heart on his sleeve. But the host of CNBC's "Mad Money" normally lets his emotions show over matters financial. In August, for example, he went ballistic at Ben Bernanke, pleading with the Fed chairman to lower interest rates in the face of widespread home foreclosures.This morning, however, Cramer got verklempt not over the discount rate but at the falling…

.... and in 24 Hours, with No Credible Support In a report from the presidential campaign trail in Wyoming early Saturday morning, Sara Kugler of the Associated Press picked up on an economic meme created out of whole cloth by one of her colleagues, and treated it as an undisputed fact -- all in the name of creating support for campaign rhetoric coming from one of the two remaining Democratic…

ABC's "World News Tonight" had a hard time on Friday without normal anchor Charles Gibson, as in its segment about the employment numbers released by the Labor Department, guest host George Stephanopoulos said the figures were from January 2008.This was stated as a graphic came on the screen reading "JOBS LOST, January 2008, 63,000." Of course, Labor's report was for the month of February.Sadly,…

There's no denying the economy is slowing, and may have either entered a recession, or is on the brink of one. Maybe.However, the media's hysterical response to Friday's February jobs report lacked any historical reference to how the labor market behaved in previous recessions.Instead, press outlet after press outlet decided that the loss of 63,000 jobs in February was a clear signal the…

For years, NewsBusters and the Business & Media Institute have regularly complained about the abysmal financial coverage offered by the mainstream press while accusing media of consistently painting a negative -- and oftentimes fallacious! -- picture of the economy.On Friday, a perfect example of such was illustrated by the Associated Press whose article about the February unemployment data…

Here's is the core information the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa had to work with today in the Employment Situation Report released by the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS): The "Dec.-Feb. change" column was added by me, but is easily calculated from the data in the BLS report. What Aversa did with this info, and my comments, are after the jump. (see also Noel Sheppard's post…