Unemployment

A sign reading "Welcome to Obamaville Colorado's Fastest Growing Community" appeared at a homeless tent city in Colorado Springs this week.You probably didn't hear about it because outside of two Colorado television stations nobody found this newsworthy.By contrast, when word got out in March of a tent city in Sacramento, California, news media couldn't get enough of the story.Is it because that…

Newsweek writer Kathleen Deveny found a strange way to spin the current economic recession as a blessing in disguise. In a column published Friday called "Unemployed Families Need to Man Up," Deveny visited the topic of working mothers and the difficulties of raising children while juggling a career. Conservatives who broach this subject are usually met with disdain from the liberal media for…

This is the fifth year I have looked into how the establishment media treats these two topics: The use of "Christmas shopping season" vs. "holiday shopping season" (the AP photo at right uses "holiday" and not "shopping," even though there is a C-C-, Chr-Chr-Christmas tree in the picture). The frequency of Christmas and holiday layoff references. I have done three sets of simple Google News…

Each year the Business & Media Institute looks back on the year's news and selects the top 10 worst economic myths. Here is our 2009 list: 10. CBS, NY Times Support Ecuadorian Shakedown of U.S. oil company9. Media Fail to Scrutinize Obama's Job Claims  8. Government Stimulus is the Answer to Our Economic Problems7. No Tax Increases for the Middle Class6. The Recession was Over ... by July…

Comedy Central's Jon Stewart used crude sexual humor Monday to bash President Obama's jobs summit.After playing a videotape of the President asking those in attendance at last Thursday's forum "for specific recommendations that can be implemented that will spur on job growth as quickly as possible," Stewart offered a somewhat vulgar idea.Delicately paraphrased, "The Daily Show" host suggested…

Responding to President Obama criticizing media coverage of the White House jobs summit, on Friday’s Hardball on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews wondered why the President wasn’t more appreciative of all the media’s help: “Why would you ride the ref when he’s calling all the plays for you? What’s he out there bashing the media for?” During a town hall meeting in Allentown, Pennsylvania on Friday,…

On Friday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith asked Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer about all the problems facing President Obama: “it was Afghanistan, now it’s jobs...healthcare....Do you remember a time when a president had as many irons – critical irons – in the fire, as this one seems to have right now?” Schieffer replied: “Oh, I suppose during the dark days of World War II.”  Schieffer…

The coverage yesterday by the Associated Press's Stephen Bernard of payroll and human resources giant ADP's monthly jobs report for November focused on a relatively small reduction in the size of the decline in jobs lost and not on the fact that continuing to lose jobs is a bad thing.That rhetorical sleight of hand enabled the AP reporter to tell us that ADP's reported private sector job loss…

Serving as a stenographer to Obama operatives trying to magnify the import of the President's schedule for the week, CBS anchor Katie Couric on Monday night trumpeted: White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says this will be an 'historic week in an already historic year,' with the Afghanistan decision, the Senate opening debate today on a health care reform bill, and the President's schedule jam…

The New York Times’s Jason DeParle and Robert Gebeloff published a long Saturday report on the Food Stamp program that went into print on Sunday. This is the second of three posts on their coverage; the first went up earlier today at NewsBusters and BizzyBlog. It addressed the pair's seeming happiness with the massive increase in program participation, their apparent unhappiness that 15-16…

"Unemployed, Underemployed Look to Jobs Summit for Help" is posted on ABC News's Web site today.  Authored by senior Washington correspondent John Cochran, the piece is notable in that nothing in it supports the headline.  Cochran writes:Boosting confidence is at the top of President Obama's list at the Jobs Summit he is scheduled to host on Thursday. The invitation list includes business leaders…

In a long Saturday report on the Food Stamp program that went into print on Sunday, the New York Times's Jason DeParle and Robert Gebeloff: Almost seemed to celebrate the program's explosive growth. Bemoaned the fact that many who could participate do not. Both in their title ("Food Stamp Use Soars, and Stigma Fades") and text, cheered the loss of stigma that has long been associated with the…

The day before Thanksgiving brought encouraging news on unemployment.  CBS News.com reported "New Jobless Claims Plunge to 466K."  Investors.com headlined "Jobless Claims Dive To 466,000."  CNN Money.com issued a special report titled "Jobless claims plummet to 14-month low."  And the Financial Times included a link to the Calculated Risk blog article "Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims Decline…

Here we go again. We've already seen how ineffective the previous $787-billion stimulus Congress and the President forced through earlier this year has been with curbing unemployment, as it has raced into double-digits over the previous months. But will there be an effort to force through another one? Earlier this week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi made overtures of another stimulus in a…