Recession

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…

Don't miss the significant reporting errors noted at the end of this post. _______________________________________________ If this were a boxing match, with "The Economy" in one corner, and "Expectations" in the other, we'd be seeing a third-round knockout with "Expectations" taken away in an ambulance. But if you think the news this week has changed the tone of the Associated Press's business…

In a hard economic times story by NBC's Kevin Tibbles on Monday's "Today" show there was a not-so-subliminal pro-Obama message on display as several times pro-Obama signs found their way into the background. Reporting on the increased traffic to pawn shops by the desperate to make ends meet in the "rocky economy," Tibbles, didn't mention Obama by name but the Illinois senator's name or image…

May 27: Paul R. La Monica for CNN Money reporting on Warren Buffett's belief that "we are already in a recession." Notice the lede: NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It's getting harder and harder to deny that the economy is in recession.May 29: The federal government releases an upward revision of the first quarter GDP growth. The ever-pessimistic AP reporter Martin Crutsinger grudgingly admitted that…

Matching predictions from Reuters and Bloomberg, the government's Bureau of Economic Analysis told us this morning that the economy grew at an upwardly-revised annualized rate of 0.9%. As I've said frequently, this is nowhere near acceptable. But it sure as heck isn't a recession.Initial reaction to the news by the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa was unfortunately predictable (bolds are mine…

The media have been quick to paint the slow-growing economy as though it's in recession. Indeed, as our friends at the Business & Media Institute discovered, the MSM now is painting the economy much worse than the print media reported the 1929 stock market crash that marked the beginning of the Great Depression.But kudos are due U.S. News & World Report's Rick Newman for staking out a…

..... But Misses Chance to Refute "Jobs Slashed" Claims. It's good to see that someone else is on the case of the recession-obsessed Associated Press, particularly reporter Jeannine Aversa. But even the estimable James Taranto, in his Best of the Web column yesterday, let Aversa's most obvious and repeated error go by without comment. Aversa started out her report yesterday ("When economy…

If there were any doubt the media is trying to milk bad economic news for all that it's worth, look no further than BusinessWeek magazine. BusinessWeek kicked off its "Recession in America" blog on May 2. It is dedicated solely to reporting on the "recession [that] is here (or will be soon)," as the headline of a May 19 post stated (h/t BMI advisor Chris Roush of Talkingbiznews.com). "As the…

Dan Gainor, Vice President for the Business & Media Institute, blamed part of people's gloomy perception of the economy on the "constant drumbeat" of negativity coming from the news media. Gainor appeared on Fox Business Network's "Cavuto" May 20. "Almost 23 million people watch evening news every night. That has an affect and that's almost 1/10 of the American population. Those are people…

The business press's recession obsession continues:A couple of weeks ago, in the wake of the initial first-quarter GDP growth reading of 0.6%, Rex Nutting at MarketWatch.com entertained us with the notion that an economy can be in a recession even while there is real, if anemic, economic growth.Today, Jeannine Aversa of the Associated Press, with the help of a number of economists, told us that…

Someone forgot to tell the Wall Street Journal's Kelly Evans and Justin Lahart, carried here at the Arizona Republic, that they're supposed to portray the economy in a bad light whenever and wherever possible. I'll get to the pair's report later. That "bad light" directive seems seared into the minds of the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger and his AP colleagues, as they continue to "cling to…