LA Times Health Blog: Twinkie Taxes = Tough Love for Fatsos
Don't think of it as another tax. Think of it as tough love from Uncle Sam.That's how Melissa Healy tried to sell Los Angeles Times readers on the notion of junk food sin taxes in her July 27 entry -- "Tough love for fat people: Tax their food to pay for healthcare" -- at the paper's Booster Shots blog:When historians look back to identify the pivotal moments in the nation's struggle against…
MRC's Bozell Discusses Health Care, Card Check, Announces MRC Bailout
"The more these things are made public, the more the American people run like hell from them," Media Research Center President Brent Bozell told the hosts of "Fox & Friends", referring to an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that shows Democratic health care proposals will balloon in costs over their implementation. [audio available here]Indeed, as the Washington Post…
BMI on FoxBiz: News Media Ignore Impact of Health Care Reform on Small
BMI's Julia A. Seymour discussed the media's sparse reporting on health care reform's impact on small businesses July 16 on the Fox Business Network. Anchor Stuart Varney asked, "Is Washington waging war on small business? And is the news media ignoring it?" Seymour told him: Yes, I think in - in many cases they are. If you look at last night's evening news coverage of this health care…
Cramer’s Cure for Ailing Stock Market: News Media Blackout of 'Bolsh
CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer often showcases erratic and unpredictable behavior and the same goes sometimes for his analysis of the stock market. While the economy continues to struggle through the recession, the forward-looking indicators known as the financial markets continue to perplex Cramer for not going up when some positive signs, also known as "green shoots" by the financial media,…
AP, Reuters Go Full Tilt in Spinning Latest Writing of Pope
[Please see update below.]Two major wire services- AP and Reuters- cherry picked excerpts from Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical (a teaching document of the Catholic Church) on Tuesday to support left-wing economic and political positions, and all but ignored the pontiff’s traditional stances on the family, bioethics, and the environment. The AP also went so far to bring up “the state of the…
The Bailed-Out Two and Who? AP Report Nearly Ignores Impact of Ford on
In the later paragraphs of a story today about the latest hurdle bailed-out General Motors has managed to jump to get out of bankruptcy, the Associated Press's Bree Fowler almost totally ignored the impact of Ford's improvement largely at GM's expense during the first half of 2009, acting as if GM's decline has almost solely been the result of defections to foreign competitors.Fowler's only…
Global Warming Overshadowed: Media Give Massive Cap-and-Trade Tax Seco
The news cycle has been dominated by celebrity deaths - Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and even TV pitchman Billy Mays - and President Barack Obama's health care initiative. Obama has used the compliant media to keep the focus to health care, and they are neglecting a critical largest news event that could impact the lives of every man, woman and child for the foreseeable future. The U.S. House…
Cap and Trade Nowhere in USA Today
On June 26, the House narrowly passed the controversial Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy & Security Act to limit carbon emissions, but USA Today readers can be forgiven for not knowing it. Instead of covering a hotly debated bill that could result in “the largest tax increase in history,” the newspaper devoted its’ coverage to the death of pop star Michael Jackson. From June 26 to June 29…
No Party Tag for Conyers' Wife; Just 20 Secs on 'Cap & Trade' Amidst
Noteworthy from Friday night's broadcast network evening newscasts which, a day after his death, spent 95 percent of their air time on Michael Jackson -- all but 1:03 of ABC's approximate 22 minutes was devoted to Jackson, all but 34 seconds of CBS and all but 1:22 of NBC, for 2:59, less than three minutes in total for all news beyond Jackson: ♦ Only ABC's World News reported how Monica Conyers,…
NY Times: How Dare Food Folks Make Their Products Taste Good
Can food taste too good? Yes, if you're New York Times health columnist Tara Parker-Pope. Her Tuesday "Well" column for the Times is currently the #1 most emailed article on nytimes.com, and is an interview with former Food and Drug Administration head (and over-zealous banner of orange juice and silicon-gel breast implants) David Kessler on his new book, with the typically scolding title, "The…
MSNBC's Ratigan Shows How Journalism Should Work
Journalists, take note: Dylan Ratigan should be your model.Despite working for MSNBC, Ratigan has shown a hard-nosed, take-no-prisoners interview style that is quickly gaining him the reputation for being the toughest interview on television. It isn’t often that an MSNBC host can claim to be tough on both sides of the political aisle, but the former CNBC correspondent could probably do it with a…
ABC, CBS Grill Obama Aide on Health Care and Regulations
ABC and CBS's morning shows on Wednesday both provided surprisingly tough questioning to Christina Romer, one of Barack Obama's economic advisors. On the issue of health care, Good Morning America co-host Diane Sawyer compared the costs of Medicare to the new health care plan and pointed out past government inaccuracies when it came to accessing cost.She grilled, "You know, in 1965, everyone was…
ABC Bashes U.S. Maternity Leave Policies: Again Links Them to Swazilan
On Tuesday's Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer complained about America's maternity leave policies for women, and for the fourth time in slightly more than two years, the show connected them to such struggling countries as Swaziland and Papua New Guinea. The host solemnly observed that only three countries "have policies equal to the United States. Swaziland, Liberia and Papua New Guinea."…
Trib Reruns 1934 Cartoon Critical of New Deal: 'Planned Economy or Pla
A fabulous 1934 Chicago Tribune cartoon that has recently been making the rounds in the blogosphere as an example of history sadly repeating itself was marvelously rerun at the paper's website on June 10.In it, members of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration are seen shoveling money out of a wagon with a billboard on the side declaring, "Depleting the resources of the soundest government in…
