Economy

Food inflation is hitting everyone - even if don't have to pay for food. According to the July 2 "CBS Evening News," part of its "The Other America" series - a title strangely similar to former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' liberal anti-poverty mantra of "Two Americas" - food stamp recipients are being hit by the rising the cost of food. "With food prices climbing, more and…

Thursday’s "Good Morning America" used the Fourth of July holiday to exaggerate the effects that food prices are having on consumers. In its "Hitting Home" segment, reporter Sharyn Alfonsi reported on the price increases of certain Fourth of July barbecue staples, claiming that "Americans are gonna eat 110 million pounds hot dogs and that could take a big bite out of their wallets."…

Rush Limbaugh's new deal with Clear Channel, as flashed by Drudge (also covered or addressed here and here at NewsBusters; here at the New York Times; and here in a very long New York Times magazine article), is north of $400 million for the next eight years.Good tax planning too: Maharushie will get his reported nine-figure signing bonus this year before a possible President Obama does his…

With Starbucks’ announcement that it will closing 600 of its locations nationwide, the network morning shows on Wednesday heralded this news as another sign of a bad economy. ABC’s Bianna Golodryga on "Good Morning America" lamented that "Americans are struggling just to pay for a cup of Starbucks coffee." NBC’s Matt Lauer’s clever headline: "Trouble brewing -- Starbucks announces its closing 600…

During June 30th's "Larry King Live," Robert F. Kennedy Jr., senior attorney at the National Resource Defense Counsel, made a head-turning statement regarding subsidies to the oil and coal industry, and not a single panelist challenged him on it. Not that one would expect King himself to do it; however, the other panelists included Chevron's David O'Reilly and ABC's John Stossel. Relevant portion…

On Monday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Harry Smith talked to economic analyst Mark Zandi about the state of the economy and asked: "Oil's up, gasoline's up, food prices up, stocks, way, way, way, way down. Home owner -- home values are down. Is there an end in sight to all of this bad news?" Zandi replied: "You just made me depressed. No. It's just bad news. It really is...It's just a really tough…

The question that is this post's title occurred to me as I read through this report earlier today by Seth Sutel of the Associated Press. I believe the question is important, and that its potential implications are underappreciated. Sutel first summarized the week's financial events in the media business. It wasn't pretty: Even for an industry awash in bad news, the newspaper business went through…

Two June 23 Motor City newspaper reports -- one in the Detroit Free Press ("Group blasts subprime loans," by Amber Hunt), the other in the Detroit News ("ACORN focuses on vote," by Mike Martindale) -- portrayed the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) as a noble enterprise dedicated to helping troubled borrowers and increasing voter involvement in the political process.…

Expensive gas isn't so bad to the "CBS Evening News," as long as it promotes an agenda that caters to left-of-center sensibilities and makes Americans behave more like Europeans.  Economists from Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) (NYSE:CM) forecasted $7-a-gallon gas prices by 2010, which according to some analysts would force 10 million vehicles off U.S. roads over four years. CIBC…

General Motors has been in business since 1897, but there are fears now propagated in the media that the longtime American icon faces an uncertain future. Brian Williams raised the possibility of General Motors (NYSE:GM) going out of business on the June 26 "NBC Nightly News" to Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's "Mad Money." "[J]im, I know you talk about this, think about this everyday for a living…

Going to extraordinary lengths to pull at the heartstrings of viewers, Wednesday's NBC Nightly News focused on, in the words of anchor Brian Williams, “the innocent victims of the foreclosure crisis” -- that would be dogs, pigs, goats and horses. Meanwhile, ABC discovered people are more likely to get murdered at work in these “hard economic times,” though they really haven't been. At the end of…

Remember when the 49ers gold rush happened in Maine? How about when Dan'l Boone explored California? Do you remember when Lee surrendered his Confederate army in Fargo, North Dakota? Well, to those famous places with famous incidents we can add that great Revolutionary War battle of Lexington and Concord... Virginia. At least we can do so in the reckoning of one Jamie Fansworth of the CBS News…

Riddle me this: when is a cartoonist as shallow and one dimensional as his own creations? When his name is Ted Rall. The San Antonio Express-News ran a short story covering a convention being held in Texas that is serving as a gathering place for some of the nation's increasingly fewer political cartoonists. Rall has been chosen as the president of this seemingly ever more irrelevant organization…