Oil & Gas Prices

Fresh off its controversial Iwo Jima cover with Marines raising a tree, Time magazine's May 5 issue celebrates with an Earth Day roundup. The cause for celebration? That in 2008, "every day is Earth Day," exulted Nancy Gibbs. Gibbs celebrated, among other things, the banning of DDT, which led to millions of preventable deaths from malaria. "Back in 1970, there was ... poison in our pesticides,"…

President Bush is holding a press conference on the U.S. economy. I'll be blogging the questions to the president below. Video of Bush/Raddatz clash here (audio available here).Video of Stolberg and Ryan on recession here (audio here)My bottom line analysis (11:25): The two R's of bias from this Rose Garden presser: Martha Raddatz on Syria and numerous reporters on the dreaded R-word, recession.…

In the past couple of weeks, NewsBusters has reported the media's sudden negative opinion of ethanol as a result of rising food prices and rationing of rice by certain retailors.You can now add NBC to the list, and, in particular, the host of CNBC's "Mad Money," Jim Cramer, who on Friday's "Today" show actually blamed ethanol for the current crisis while stating emphatically, "You drop the…

A remarkable thing happened Thursday: a press member wanted to ask Nobel Laureate Al Gore about the growing international food crisis and how it relates to ethanol and global warming hysteria.Not surprisingly, the man who cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate fourteen years ago mandating the use of ethanol wasn't available, and a spokesman for his hysteria-driving Alliance for Climate…

As food prices soar, and rationing of such things as rice begin, America's media are finally starting to wake up to the inconvenient truth that ethanol is not the energy panacea folks like Nobel Laureate Al Gore proclaim.Leading the charge is conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck, who invited the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Iain Murray on his program Tuesday to discuss the looming crisis…

And here we go again. I'm all for catchy headlines, but CNN has to be a bit more responsible with its choices when reporting on gasoline prices."Gas prices climbing with no end in sight," reads a hyperbolic April 22 CNN.com headline. "No end in sight" might make for great left-wing populist rhetoric, but it's hardly balanced economic reporting.Indeed, the only thing to justify the "no end"…

President George W. Bush’s days in the White House may be numbered, but that isn’t stopping the media from taking a few cheap shots on the way out. ABC’s April 21 “Nightline” reported on the increased cost of gasoline, but did so in terms of the Bush presidency. “Tonight, $3.51 – that’s the average price nationwide of a single gallon of regular unleaded gasoline. That means a 15-gallon tank now…

Tuesday's "Good Morning America" went into hyperbole meltdown over high gas prices. According to various anchors and reporters, Americans are foregoing church, prescription drugs and breakfast in order to cope. In a tease at the show's open, Co-host Diane Sawyer fretted, "As gas prices balloon, 12 cents in just one week, some Americans tell you how they skip breakfast and drugs just to drive."…

For months, NewsBusters has been warning readers of the likelihood that media will adopt the 1992 Clinton playbook of regularly depicting the economy as being far worse than it really is.On Sunday, the Democratic National Committee released a new television advertisement attacking GOP presidential candidate John McCain with economic statistics that don't measure up to even the slightest scrutiny…

Barack Obama has been airing a shamelessly anti-business TV ad in Pennsylvania for a while now. In the ad Obama himself, in his own voice, makes the claim that he doesn't "take money from oil companies." But there is a two-fold deception in this claim that Obama doesn't tell his sycophantic fans. So where is the media to pounce on these cynical deceptions? They’re nowhere to be seen. Recently I…

You're going to need a few extra bucks to pay for those corn flakes every morning.CNN's senior business correspondent Ali Velshi let viewers in on an underreported fact about rising commodities prices: the government mandate for ethanol production is making corn and other agricultural products more expensive-making inflation a top priority for Americans."Several years ago, we made some decisions…