Christopher Rugaber

AP's Rugaber, Despite Wednesday's Weak Economic Data: 'Fundamentals Remain Solid'
By Tom Blumer | November 29, 2015 | 10:03 PM EST

As yours truly noted in several posts at my home blog on Wednesday and at NewsBusters on Friday and Saturday, the torrent of pre-Thanksgiving "getaway day" economic data was largely disappointing.

That didn't stop the Associated Press's Chris Rugaber from pushing the "All is well" meme late Wednesday afternoon, declaring, contrary to what anyone's eyes could see, that "the fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain solid," that "Consumers appear relatively confident in the economy," and that "Americans are unleashing pent-up demand for big-ticket items such as homes and cars."

AP's Rugaber Hides the Overall Decline in Thanksgiving and Black Friday Sales
By Tom Blumer | November 28, 2015 | 6:46 PM EST

The truth about this year's Thanksgiving and Black Friday store and online sales is out there. It's just that Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, wasn't interested in clearly revealing all of it.

Instead, the AP economics writer told readers about the dollar amount of this year's and last year's Thursday and Friday store sales, but failed to quantify the increase in online sales. People who don't follow the economy closely likely don't know that an increase in online sales is quite unlikely to offset a decrease in brick-and-mortar store sales. The way Rugaber wrote up his piece ensured that news of the economy's continued malaise will remain elusive for low-information news consumers and, ultimately, low-information voters.

Hide the Declines: AP's Rugaber Ignores Steep Industry Group Production Drops Until Late in His Writeup
By Tom Blumer | November 18, 2015 | 2:46 PM EST

The catalog of wishful thinking technically classified as reports on the economy emanating from the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, grows with virtually each passing business day.

One of yesterday's additions to the mountainous pile came from the AP's Christopher Rugaber. Tasked with covering the Federal Reserve's report on October's industrial production, he devoted 10 of his 11 paragraphs in his dispatch to manufacturing. He didn't even tell readers that the Fed's release was about anything besides manufacturing until his ninth paragraph. The AP's headline writers also cooperated by only mentioning manufacturing. In an utterly amazing "coincidence" (no, not really), manufacturing is the only one of the Fed report's three major industry groups which turned in a positive performance:

AP Pair 'Fact Checks' an Achieved Goal and a Completely True Statement
By Tom Blumer | November 12, 2015 | 11:55 PM EST

The "fact-checking" press has become a parody of itself during the past several years.

It's not only because of their irritating penchant for putting statements by Republicans and conservatives under a twisted microscope while ignoring drop-dead obvious falsehoods delivered by Democrats and leftists. It's because, among other things, the fact-checkers often admit that a statement is true, but then proceed to essentially say, "So what?" They also take policy goals articulated by candidates, which may or may not come to pass, render an opinion that it can't be done, and then pretend that they've actually proven something. An example of each annoying habit was found in Tuesday evening's Associated Press "fact check" of statements made by Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush during the most recent Republican presidential candidates' debate.

AP Pair's GOP Debate 'Fact Check' Promotes Minimum-Wage Fiction
By Tom Blumer | November 12, 2015 | 10:58 AM EST

Tuesday evening, Associated Press economics writers Christopher Rugaber and Josh Boak attempted to "fact check" statements made by candidates at the just-completed Republican presidential debate.

Claiming that "The fourth Republican presidential debate was thick on economic policy — and with that came a variety of flubs and funny numbers," the two writers botched at least half of the six points they tried to make. Their most obvious economic error concerned the impact of minimum-wage increases (I will cover two others in a future post):

Without Evidence, AP's Rugaber Credits 'Solid Sales' For Home Price Index Increase
By Tom Blumer | October 28, 2015 | 12:59 AM EDT

To err is human, but some errors are more obvious than others.

One pretty obvious error occurred Tuesday at the Associated Press. It involved veteran economics reporter Christopher Rugaber, who somehow assumed that the August increase in home prices recorded in a well-known index published on Tuesday primarily occurred because of "solid sales." The problem is that seasonally adjusted existing home sales declined sharply in August.

AP's Rugaber Fails to Note 21,000 Jobs Lost in Government's State Jobs Report
By Tom Blumer | October 21, 2015 | 6:55 PM EDT

On October 2, the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that U.S. payroll employment increased in September by a seasonally adjusted 142,000 jobs. That was disappointing enough, but then the BLS's regional and state report for September released on Tuesday showed a combined total of 21,000 jobs lost in all 50 states and DC.

In his coverage of the state report, the Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber didn't report this wide variance, even though the monthly national vs. total state difference is usually much smaller. The closest he got was reporting that more states lost jobs than gained them, which should have piqued his curiosity about how that result could happen when the nation somehow gained as many jobs as it did during the month, but apparently didn't (bolds are mine):

AP's Reported 'Fastest Pace' in Home Sales in Seven Years Really Isn't
By Tom Blumer | September 25, 2015 | 10:56 AM EDT

Thursday morning at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, Christopher Rugaber opened his coverage of the Census Bureau's New Residential Sales report as follows: "Buoyed by steady job gains and low mortgage rates, Americans purchased new homes in August at the fastest pace in more than seven years."

Sorry, pal, it was the "fastest pace" in — wow — three months. The bureau's not seasonally adjusted home sales table told us that:

Press Meme: August Job Growth Was Lowballed; If Revised, It Will Still Be Weak
By Tom Blumer | September 6, 2015 | 11:51 PM EDT

A popular meme in the wake of Friday's jobs report seen at many media outlets is that August's reported job growth of 173,000 seasonally adjusted jobs is a virtual lock to be revised up by 50,000, or 78,000, or perhaps even more, since such revisions during the past three years have been unusually large.

Well, since they opened that can of worms, let me make clear to everyone that even if those revisions materialize, August will still have been a singularly unimpressive month.

U of M, AP Falsely Blame Consumer Sentiment Drop on Stock Market Plunge
By Tom Blumer | August 28, 2015 | 10:22 PM EDT

At the Associated Press today, Christopher Rugaber appears to have played along with a game of make-believe in his coverage of the August release of the University of Michigan's Survey of Consumers.

The index dropped for the second straight month, this time from 93.1 to 91.9, a point below August's prelimnary reading of 92.9. That trailed expectations that it would come in at 93.0. The survey's director, Richard Curtin, claimed that the drop occurred "mainly due to the recent volatility in stock prices." Whatever his reason for making that claim, it doesn't pass the smell test, and Rugaber had all the information needed to figure that out (which he may have) and report it (which he didn't).

Deadpan Humor at AP: 'Job Market Is Not Yet Back to Full Health'
By Tom Blumer | July 31, 2015 | 11:22 AM EDT

Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press and the "expert" he quoted in his writeup on the government's awful Employment Cost Index report seemed to be taking their cues from Steven Wright's deadpan comedy act. The problem, of course, is that they were writing and saying isn't funny at all.

Rugaber, with his "expert" help, assembled an impressive array of understatements and misstatements in the wake of the smallest reported quarterly increase in U.S. worker pay on record. His worst characterization: "[T]he job market is not yet back to full health."

AP and The Hill Look at the Same Business Survey, Draw Up Sharply Different Reports
By Tom Blumer | July 20, 2015 | 11:32 PM EDT

The National Association of Business Economics released its quarterly survey of its members' take on the state of the current and future economy today.

Given that the survey only had 112 responses, it's probably not a good idea to generalize too much about its results. That didn't stop The Hill from headlining Vicki Needham's writeup by far too optimistically declaring that "Business leaders expect strong finish to 2015." In an upset, possibly indicating that today's scheduled koolaid delivery intended for the Associated Press got misdirected to and doubled up at the Hill's offices, the wire service's Christopher Rugaber — looking at the same survey — wrote that "U.S. businesses' outlook on sales in the coming months has darkened."