Economy

Perhaps it's the pied piper effect, but when Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama speaks, the media follow right along in lockstep. The word "disaster" can invoke images of the aftermath of hurricanes, tornados or tsunamis. But, on the campaign trail where there are political points to be scored - it's one quarter of a slight economic contraction followed up by two quarters of…

Editor's Note: This story originally ran on our sister site www.Businessandmedia.org.  When is an increase in consumer confidence bad news? When ABC reports it.Network anchor George Stephanopoulos led off the news cast with this gloom-and-doom teaser: "Terrible Tuesday. Inflation surges. Stocks dive. And consumer confidence nears a record low."But Stephanopoulos left out a key detail: consumer…

Amity Shlaes, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, penned an August 18 Washington Post column examining five of the government's Depression-era mistakes that made financial matters worse. Shlaes, author of "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression" cautioned today's lawmakers against following in those footsteps.According to Shlaes, "perverse monetary policy was…

A study released today by the slightly left-of-center Project for Excellence in Journalism confirmed what many NBers have suspected for a while: the media's negative coverage of the economy affects public opinion. According to PEJ, the public's concern about the economy as an issue has always outstripped that of the media. That's pretty normal considering that America's economy is one of the few…

A former New York Times investigative journalist who wrote primarily on business and taxation will soon be speaking at a "progressive" gathering. Further, in his inaugural column at a post-Times gig, he misrepresented the nature of the 1980 and 2000 tax-cut proposals by the Republican presidential candidates. Finally, in another post-Times tax column, he used vitriolic class warfare-based…

Here's news the traditional media will work very hard to ignore. According to data released by Uncle Sam's Bureaus of Labor Statistics today, the unemployment rate in Illinois is the fifth-highest in the country. The Land of Lincoln had a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 7.3% in July, up 2.2% from the previous year's 5.1%. That puts Illinois, along with California, in a tie for fourth…

Perhaps the media's Obama lovefest isn't as infectious as previously thought - at least in some corners of the financial media. For the second day in a row CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Cabrera noted low taxes - a conservative economic ideal - trumps those of the left, both economically and politically. Caruso-Cabrera and "Squawk Box" co-anchor Joe Kernan interviewed Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the chief…

It's not often someone in the media challenges the liberal point-of-view - especially on the issue of taxes when they become a means to redistribute income. CNBC "Squawk Box" fill-in co-host Michelle Caruso-Cabrera wasn't afraid to buck the trend and challenge Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's senior economic adviser Austan Goolsbee. Goolsbee appeared on the August 14 "Squawk…

You would think that someone working for the self-described "Essential Global News Network" known as the Associated Press as an Education Writer might go beyond using the Copy and Paste commands in reporting on national college entrance exam test scores. From all appearances, you would be wrong. AP Education Writer Justin Pope's report on the 2008 ACT exam results appears to contain nothing that…

Maybe it was a stab by Charles Gibson to provide a national group therapy session for his 8 million viewers, but the ABC "World News" anchor aggressively questioned ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson on the August 14 broadcast for "obscene" profits and asked him to "justify" the company's success. "As we said earlier, Rex Tillerson - who is the board chair and CEO of ExxonMobil, doesn't talk often to…

Last month, it was the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa's turn to mishandle the reporting on Uncle Sam's Monthly Treasury Statement on the government's receipts, spending, and deficit. Aversa's usual specialty is hallucinating over "blizzards of pink slips" and "jobs vanishing into thin air" when she does her "report," aka her downbeat propaganda piece, on the government's monthly jobs release…

If any further evidence was needed to prove that the country is in a recession, the CBS Early Show found it, as co-host Maggie Rodriguez declared: "Coming up this morning, during hard times in some U.S. cities, they're as good as gold. Manhole covers being stolen and sold for scrap." Co-host Harry Smith later introduced the segment on this desperate trend: "Across the country thieves are stealing…

Chris Matthews:  Back With an Obamania Vengeance . . . If Barack Obama makes it to the White House, perhaps he should appoint Chris Matthews Commissar of Gosplan, the Commission charged with developing the economy's Five Year Plans.  The Hardball host, back from vacation, displayed the enthusiasm of a dutiful apparatchik in praising an Obama ad that in turn amounted to a pitch for central…

On Monday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Julie Chen introduced a segment on China hosting the Olympics: "Well, the Olympic games are more than a chance for the world's athletes to excel, they also give the host nation an opportunity to shine. For China and it's 1.3 billion people, the Beijing games are feeding a groundswell of pride." Chen then went to correspondent Barry Petersen who declared: "From…