Wall Street Journal

  On Wednesday, Fox News became the first news network to pick up on the contradiction between claims made by Senator Hillary Clinton about her 1996 trip to Bosnia and the reality reported by journalists at the time. In a speech on Monday, Clinton asserted that “I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran…

Ken Shepherd of NewsBusters posted Tuesday on Editor and Publisher's March 11 article listing the four-year circulation changes at the nation's top 20 newspapers, concentrating on the 20% loss at the Los Angeles Times during that period. What's also compelling is that the Top 20 really has three winners and 17 losers during that four-year time frame, as the chart that follows demonstrates:

After Environmental Protection Agency Chief Stephen Johnson's appearance before Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's powerless House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, CBS decided to dole out its own criticism of the EPA. The March 13 "CBS Evening News" reported the EPA had not lived up to the obligations of an April 2007 Supreme Court ruling. "Congressional…

It's not exactly a secret that John McCain is not admired by conservatives for a variety of reasons. The conventional wisdom is that the Arizona Senator and GOP presidential nominee needs to mend some, uh, fences (warning: profanity at link) with many in his party. Fair enough, but a word to the wise, and this is relevant regardless of personal ideology: If either McCain himself, or anyone who…

Doesn’t look like an olive branch to me. Writing in today’s (Tuesday's) Wall Street Journal, novelist and sometime Republican activist Mark Helprin (not to be confused with Time magazine’s Mark Halperin) takes a series of insulting personal shots at the radio talk show hosts who’ve criticized John McCain for his numerous anti-conservative positions.Helprin, whose last big political job was…

Well, this will send the Kossacks into a tizzy! The Wall Street Journal has an op-ed by Dan Gerstein, "Decline of the Angry Left." Gerstein, a senior adviser for Joe Lieberman's various national campaigns, claims that the Daily Kos is finished as a mover and shaker in Democratic politics. After reading it over I think he is dead on with much of his analysis. The anger of the extremist, left as…

Recession stories have a lot in common with global warming stories - there are a lot of them and you hear only one side. And like global warming, recession is the subject of a Newsweek cover story, appearing on the front of the magazine's February 4 issue. The story, "The U.S. Economy Faces the Guillotine," written by Daniel Gross, takes a one-sided gloomy approach to reporting on the U.S.…

You've probably heard about the French trader who has managed to stash away $7 billion before going on the lam. What's the big deal with sticking it to some French bank for $7 billion? This $7-billion loss by the French bank Societe Generale (SocGen) (EPA:GLE) might have caused the sharp plunge in some European stock markets on January 21 - which spurred the Federal Reserve to make an…

After the Fed made an "emergency" 75-basis-point rate cut this morning, CNBC's "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer, who has gone from bull market cheerleader to bear market doom and gloomer in the last six months, said it was too little too late. "[T]his is obviously the kind of action I was most fearful of - which is that they would have to go panic and that they would get way behind the curve,"…

The headline "The Economy Sucks" might be something you'd expect to see in Rolling Stone or on Slate.com, but certainly not in a reputable news magazine, right? Yet, the January 21 issue of Newsweek defied expectations by using that for part of a headline for a one-sided, pro-Bill Clinton view of the economy. The article recalled the 1992 "It's the economy, stupid!" campaign as it tore down…

You might disagree with how he slashed the Fed funds rate during times of economic turmoil as Federal Reserve chairman. You might have even disavowed him after showing his coziness with the Clinton administration throughout the 1990s. But after 18 years of public service, you can't deny that Alan Greenspan should have a shot in the private sector. However, despite media accolades through…

A lot of journalists have written off the possibility the economy can avert a recession. However, it isn't conventional wisdom that the economy is heading for a recession outside of the journalism world. Jack Welch, author of "Winning," appeared on MSNBC's January 14 "Morning Joe" to discuss the economy, the presidential race and professional football. Welch told viewers he didn't anticipate…

The Treasury Department released its Monthly Treasury Statement for December this afternoon. Though Uncle Sam did run a surplus last month, the year-to-date figures are alarming: It should be pretty clear that the big news in the above figures is that federal spending during the first quarter of the fiscal year was almost 9% higher than during the first quarter a year ago. If the spending…

The economy is about to dive off a cliff and it's all President George W. Bush's fault, according to The New York Times editorial board. A January 2 Times editorial was pretty pessimistic about the economy in 2008, mocking Bush and forecasting doom. "As 2008 begins, house prices are still skidding, bank losses are still mounting, oil is again flirting with $100 a barrel and consumers are…