Economy

The Associated Press seems determined to become even worse at "fact-checking" politicians' statements than Politifact, the current cellar-dwellar in that regard. At the rate things are going, the wire service, in addition to richly earning its nickname "the Administration's Press" since January 2009, appears to be in line for yet another: "Associated Politifact." In his "fact check" following…

On Wednesday, the CBS Evening News complained about the U.S. maternity polices and unfavorably compared America to Micronesia and Tonga. Anchor Scott Pelley noted Netflix's decision allow a year of leave. Reporter Jim Axelrod then chided: "The U.S. is the only western developed country not requiring companies to offer paid maternity leave, joining countries like Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, and…

I noted on Sunday how former Associated Press reporter Philip Elliott, writing for Time Magazine's Time.com website, joined the Scott Walker pile-on brigade criticizing the Wisconsin Governor's reasonable — arguably to a fault — position that he doesn't personally know whether Barack Obama is a Christian. A separate post by Elliott, which covered a weekend retreat hosted by Charles Koch,…

These economics reporters at the Associated Press have become experts at deadpan humor. Earlier today, I noted how the wire service's Christopher Rugaber told readers, in the wake of a government report showing the lowest wage and benefit increases on record, that "the job market is not yet back to full health." No kidding, Chris. On top of that, the AP's Martin Crutsinger reacted to yesterday's…

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 bar-lowering in the business press continues. In the wake of today's disappointing news from the government on U.S. economic growth, an email from CNNMoney.com failed to properly describe reported second-quarter growth, and falsely characterized today's results as "solid":

“California sigue siendo uno de los estados más generosos con los inmigrantes”, fue frase usada por la presentadora de Univision, Satcha Pretto, al anunciar una nueva iniciativa californiana para canalizar 15 millones de dólares del contribuyente a organizaciones tales como la Hermandad Mexicana, “para ayudar a quienes intentan adquirir su ciudadanía”.

“California continues to be one of the most generous states with immigrants,” was how anchor Satcha Pretto launched into a recent Univision morning news story about the implementation of a new California initiative that will channel $15 million of taxpayer money to organizations such as Hermandad Mexicana (the Mexican Brotherhood), in order to “help those who are trying to acquire their…

The news out of Venezuela has apparently become so grim that the arguably Chavista-sympathetic press barely bothers to report it in any kind of sutstantive fashion. Inflation has gone wild, the level of violent crime has become frightening, and the government has taken to jailing citizens who dare to tweet their dissatisfaction with the regime of Nicolas Makuro (note that the linked report was…

Yet another important economic statistic confidently predicted to rise has fallen — hard. This time it was June's pending sales of existing homes. Just in time for summer, they were predicted to increase by a seasonally adjusted 1.0 percent to 1.5 percent. Instead they fell by 1.8 percent, the steepest drop since December 2013. Additionally, May's original 0.9 percent increase was revised down…

The Conference Board's July Consumer Confidence report released earlier today threw a heavy dose of cold water on the idea that the economy might finally achieve a broad-based, genuine recovery this year. Despite month after month of "all is well" reporting — and excuse-making when all hasn't been well — from the U.S. business press, the American public has apparently finally figured out that…

"Dodge City" blared the teaser headline atop msnbc.com's home page. "Clinton blatantly sidesteps Keystone question," noted the subheadline for the story by the Lean Forward network's Alex Seitz-Wald.

I guess the slogan of labor has changed from "Look for the union label" to "Look for the union waiver." The Los Angeles Times published a long front-page story early this morning on an issue some people thought disappeared after its initial exposure two months ago. The issue is whether union workers should be exempt from minimum wage laws, especially the sky-high minimums being enacted in some U…

Based on how they handled it today, it's pretty obvious that the Associated Press's Ken Sweet and his wire service's headline writers want the lowest possible number of users of their reporting — consumers and subscribing print and broadcast outlets — to know about the mainland Chinese stock market's historically deep 8.5 percent Monday dive. It took four paragraphs for Sweet to get to the…