Wages & Prices

The Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber had a very bad day on Thursday as he covered the government's June jobs report, but it was all self-inflicted. I noted much of the problem in a NewsBusters post yesterday, citing how the AP economics writer got badly burned while engaging in the wire service's usual practice of analyzing expected and reported economic results instead of concentrating on…

This post will document what transpired at the Associated Press on Thursday before and just after the release of the government's employment report. It should be a humiliating lesson to its business and economics writers. One would hope that they might learn to concentrate solely on discerning and accurately reporting the relevant facts, and to leave the analysis to others. (I know; fat chance…

All three major broadcast networks covered on their Thursday evening newscasts the June 2015 jobs report, but it was ABC’s World News Tonight that neglected provide any further details and/or context beyond the unemployment rate and number of jobs added and omitted how hourly wages remained flat and the labor force participation rate sunk to its lowest level in 38 years. While CBS and NBC…

On Tuesday, CNN's Jim Acosta asked President Obama about "what some people are calling 'your best week ever.'" Acosta played up that "you had two Supreme Court decisions supportive of the Affordable Care Act and of gay rights. You also delivered a speech down in Charleston that was pretty warmly received." The correspondent then underlined that 'it seems that you've built up some political…

On Tuesday, the “Big Three” (ABC, CBS, and NBC) networks all highlighted President Obama’s plan to increase the income threshold for salaried workers who earn overtime pay but only CBS This Morning acknowledged the potential harm such a policy change could have on businesses. 

On Friday's New Day, during a discussion of the then-upcoming funeral for South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney, CNN host Alisyn Camerota brought up issues of high poverty in South Carolina's black population and invited Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn to use the recent church massacre as a springboard to push for diverting more federal money into high-poverty areas.

A week after CNN's New Day aired a pair of pre-recorded segments focusing on an allegedly balanced group of New Hampshire voters who ended up displaying political views stacked heavily in the liberal direction, this week's batch of voters -- this time from Charleston, South Carolina -- appear even more slanted to the left in spite of suggestions of a balanced sample with equal numbers of…

In February of last year, Gap Inc., which operates Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic and Athleta stores, announced that it would raise its minimum hourly rate of pay for all U.S. employees to $9 in June 2014 and $10 in June 2015. As a result, it won "praise from President Obama who is pushing to raise the nation's minimum wage by a similar amount." The company said that the move would affect 65,000…

The New York Times magazine launched another emotional attack on Wisconsin's Republican (and presidential hopeful) Gov. Scott Walker, whom the paper cannot forgive for successfully taming his state's public unions and then surviving an expensive, union-funded recall election. Contributor Dan Kaufman's romanticized, pro-union 5,700-word cover story was advertised as "Labor's Last Stand -- Scott…

Another day, another batch of poll results from the New York Times pushing a liberal issue. Yesterday it was campaign finance. Thursday's front page brought the paper's latest installment of the paper's ongoing obsession with "income inequality," "Inequality Troubles Americans Across Party Lines, a Poll Finds," with special pressure on what it would mean for the Republicans in 2016.

This has to be the month's top entry in the "Just when you think you've seen it all" category — and it will be more than a little interesting to see how the nation's press handles it. As the Associated Press reported a week ago, the City Council in Los Angeles, by a vote of 14-1, ordered the drafting of a law mandating a citywide minimum wage of $15 per hour by 2020, noting that "the support of…

Seldom does one see such an obvious betrayal of reporters' biased mindsets as the one found in the opening paragraph of an Associated Press report earlier today on CEO pay at major U.S. publicly-held companies. According to the AP's Steve Rothwell and Ryan Nakashima, that entertainers, whose incomes are derived from leveraging special physical and artistic talents, deserve all the money they can…

On Wednesday’s NBC Today, co-host Tamron Hall stumbled upon conservative economic philosophy as she defended a hot dog vendor’s right to charge customers whatever he wanted, even if it was overpriced: “But why can’t he set his own prices? I mean, if a restaurant sells their hot dog, steak, or whatever for the price they want, why is his price regulated?”

Is Jesus a Bernie Sanders fan?  Could be, if you believe Howard Dean.  On today's Morning Joe, Dean claimed that "if you look at the red-letter version of the Bible, Jesus was probably to the left of the Democratic party." Dean's declaration came in the context of a discussion of yesterday's forum on poverty in which President Obama and AEI President Arthur Brooks participated.  Question: is…