Economy

On Wednesday night, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC refused to cover the Obama administration’s official unveiling of new regulations that aim to force neighborhoods to diversification or risk losing annual federal funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). As they often do when the networks fail to cover a story, the Fox News Channel (FNC) program Special Report was…

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…

After watching anchor Jorge Ramos’ complete interview of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Fusion, I immediately began to speculate as to which parts would be left on the cutting room floor during its Sunday rebroadcast on Univision’s Al Punto. It didn’t take me long to find out that I was right.

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…

From the man who brought you malaise, now an even more depressingly negative view of America . . . On today's Morning Joe, Jimmy Carter declared that America is in "inevitable decline."   But no finger-pointing at President Obama, please: Carter declared that the decline is "not because of any defect or fault on the part of the President of the United States."   Cue the Cole Porter: it's just…

As I was looking for news coverage of Thursday's horrid factory orders report from the Census Bureau late last week, I came across an incredibly optimistic Blomberg News report by Victoria Stilwell. The headline of her story on July 1, the day before that factory orders release, read: "Factories Making a Comeback as U.S. Domestic Demand Picks Up." My reaction: On what planet? It turns out that…

A menudo, los propietarios de pequeñas empresas se quejan de estar siendo “estrangulados” por el mandato de cada vez más beneficios. Sin embargo, pocas veces ese clamor es presentado con un estilo claro y atractivo, como sucedió con la cobertura de la legislación en California que obliga a empresas a pagar días de ausencia por enfermedad para trabajadores temporales.

Small business owners often complain about being “choked” by ever-increasing mandated benefits, but rarely do you see their complaints presented in a clear and compelling way. An exception took place during coverage of the very latest mandated benefit in California: sick leave for part-time employees, which just took effect this month. 

Though the Associated Press is now basically admitting it, we all knew it. Obamacare's 30-hours-per-week definition of a "full-time employee" for employer health insurance coverage purposes has been responsible for one of the fundamentally negative changes in the American workforce — a noticeable move away from full-time to part-time employment. In a report with a current Saturday morning time…

All the attention given to the decidedly mixed employment report the government issued early Thursday morning and the ongoing debt drama in Greece overshadowed a very disappointing release on factory orders which arrived from the Census Bureau 90 minutes later. In a cursory eight-paragraph report at the Associated Press, Martin Crutsinger relayed the basic bad news, but studiously avoided citing…

The folks at Reuters issued a pretty sloppy video yesterday relating to the government's June jobs report. That videos described yesterday's reported jobs gains of 223,000 as "broad-based." That's true only if you think having 222,000 of yeaterday's those seasonally adjusted gains occurring in service industries, while only 1,000 were seen in goods-producing industries, is "broad-based":

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…

As he appeared on Thursday's New Day, liberal CNN political commentator and Hillary Clinton supporter Paul Begala hinted that being called a "Bolshevik" communist is resume enhancement for a Democratic presidential primary as he recalled that, what he referred to as the "very moderate Clinton economic team" from the Bill Clinton administration, used to deride Hillary Clinton and her staff as "the…

MSNBC host Chris Hayes devoted a segment during Monday’s All In to commenting on the financial crisis in Greece and chose not to attack the left-wing government or any of the previous governments for their spending habits, but rather laid blame at the feet of “morally monstrous” European banks and others in the Eurozone for grinding “Greece into misery” in “a sadistic exercise in sheer will to…