The business press worships at the altar of seasonally adjusted data. Most journalists covering the economy don't even bother looking at raw, not seasonally adjusted data, which in layman's terms is best understood as "what actually happened." As I have shown for nearly a decade, this is often a big mistake.

On the rare occasions when reporters take the initiative to look at the raw data, they usually ignor it, or fail to grasp its meaning. A perfect example of that phenomenon occurred today at Bloomberg News. The business press is blindly accepting a reported 10.5 percent drop in existing home sales as evidence of all kinds of problems, including — supposedly, but not really — a regulation-driven extension of closing time frames. Though Bloomberg's Victoria Stilwell was astute enough to look at the underlying data, unlike her fellow reporters at the Associated Press and Reuters, she completely ignored how doing so blew up the narrative.

Rosalind Brewer is CEO of Sam's Club, the wholesale division of Walmart. Sam's claims that it is "committed to being the most valued membership organization in the world."

Brewer is apparently "committed" to a cause which has become quite a distraction from Sam's core commitment. Last week, she told CNN of a meeting she had with a supplier. Was she interested in getting the best prices and terms to save her members money and otherwise deliver "value"? Apparently not. Instead, she obsessed over the fact that the subject firm's executive team happened to consist exclusively of white men. On Wednesday, David Boroff at the New York Daily News called those who have objected to Brewer's dance on the edges of overt racism stupid white people, i.e., "white meatheads." The far-below-genius white guy here is actually NYDN home page editor Boroff himself. You see, the video posted at the paper's web site is from The Black Sphere, a site operated by Kevin Jackson, a definitely not-white guy.

A leftist flack who has been waging his own personal war on women for at least a decade has been exposed. As a result, his far-left public relations firm, a leader in the field, has closed.

FitzGibbon Media shut down on Thursday. That's because Trevor FitzGibbon, the firm's founder and owner, who also was "a communications director for (now-President Barack) Obama’s 2008 campaign," has been accused by several now-former employees of sexual assault and sexual harassment. Though the defunct firm's client list reads like a Who's Who of "progressive" and radical causes, and despite how sensational charges such as these are usually considered ready-made clickbait in the press, the FitzGibbon shutdown has received minimal press exposure. The obvious comparative point, raised at TruthRevolt on Friday: "Just imagine if this were a GOP PR firm."

Showing that they’ve learned next to nothing from the George Stephanopoulos/Clinton Foundation scandal, ABC allowed its chief anchor in Stephanopoulos to anchor its pre-game coverage of Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate. Not surprisingly, the former Clinton White House official teamed with DNC Vice Chairwoman Donna Brazile to gush over how Hillary Clinton has “found her footing during the fall” and has been “battle tested” following e-mail server and Clinton Foundation scandals that rocked her candidacy earlier in the year.

For an understanding of just how weak the business press's understanding of economic fundamentals is, look no further than Paul Wiseman's brief "coverage" at the Associated Press Wednesday of the Federal Reserve's awful Industrial Production.

The Fed reported yesterday that industrial production fell by 0.6 percent in November on top of a revised -0.4 percent (down from -0.2 percent) in October. None of the three major industrial components turned in a positive November result (Manufacturing, flat; Mining, -1.1 percent; Utilities, -4.3 percent). Additionally, industrial production in the past 12 months has fallen by 1.2 percent, an occurrence which has historically been a recessionary red flag. But that's okay, Wiseman reassured readers, because "the American economy is relatively healthy thanks to solid consumer spending."