AP Drags Bush 43 Into Coverage of IG's Report on Solyndra
Almost four years ago, solar energy manufacturer Solyndra filed for bankruptcy, leaving the federal government with a loan guarantee-related loss of up to $535 million.
The Energy Department's inspector general released a report on the debacle today. At the Associated Press, reporter Kevin Freking made sure readers knew that the loan guarantee program began under President George W. Bush, but…
Venezuela's Govt. Largely Avoiding Media Blame For Economic Calamity
As Venezuela's Chavista economy under Nicolas Maduro continues to crumble, the Associated Press and others in the media to describe its problems as if they came out of nowhere instead of originating with its statist, oppressive government.
Examples follow the jump.
NYTimes Finds Canada's Syrup 'Cartel" Holds Markets, Producers Hostage
Business
The Canadian government is souring maple syrup production in Quebec, according to The New York Times.
Through the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, an agency, the Times referred to as a “cartel,” the Canadian government has seized control of 70 percent of the world’s maple syrup supply and turned the lives of Canadian farmers upside down.
Apple Gets Kid-Glove Treatment After CEO Emails CNBC's Jim Cramer
It doesn't seem likely that an oil company CEO would get the benefit of the doubt Apple CEO Tim Cook received from the press yesterday after he emailed well-known financial commentator and investment adviser Jim Cramer about his company's performance in China.
In an email read over the air on CNBC, Cook reported that "we have continued to experience strong growth for our business in China…
Blogger: Right Doesn’t Care About ‘Evidence or Empirical Results’
Conservatives tend to be religious, but is conservatism itself akin to a religion? Yes, opined Washington Monthly blogger David Atkins in a Sunday post. “Many consider modern conservatism to be an almost cultic movement,” Atkins wrote. “Its adherents long since stopped caring about the evidence or empirical results. It’s all about who can prove truest to the faith, and maximally annoy and rebel…
Deflated: Brady Scandal Gets 5 Times More Coverage than China Economy
Business
The downward spiral of China’s economy has sent U.S. stocks plunging wildly. The Dow dropped 1,000 points as the market opened Aug. 24, but stocks were rebounding by midday according to MarketWatch.
MarketWatch reported that day, “Chinese equities surrendered all of their gains for 2015, and a rout in the U.S. on Friday that capped the worst week for the market in four years. Investors are…
After Market's Disastrous Day, AP Makes Several Wishful Assertions
Tonight's report at the Associated Press in the wake of Wall Street's disastrous day isn't quite an Animal House moment — "Remain Calm! All Is Well!" — but it's more than fair to say that the wire service's Matthew Craft and Bernard Condon allowed quite a bit of wishful thinking into their writeup.
In late June, I noted that the AP's Ken Sweet asked a very important question about China ("IS…
Crickets: Fed Official Finds No Evidence That QE Accomplished Anything
Imagine if, in 1987, a Federal Reserve official could have pointed to a poorly performing economy and said, "Gee, this supply-side economics hasn't worked out very well." The press would surely have treated the story as a front-page item and ensured that it got air time on the Big Three networks' then-dominant nightly news broadcasts. Of course, there was no such credible report, because the…
MSNBC.com Trolls with 'Is God Anti-Capitalist?' Headline
The award for trollish headline of the day should go to MSNBC.com.
Blogger: Right Says 14th Am. Covers Only ‘Corporations and Fetuses'
The three Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution were, as the term suggests, ratified in the wake of the Civil War. These days, according to Daily Kos writer Jon Perr, conservatives are generally OK with the anti-slavery 13th Amendment but have watered down the 15th, which abolished racial restrictions on voting, and reserve their “greatest and most visceral…scorn” for the 14th, as…
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CBS, NBC Fail to Cover IRS Data Breach, Feds Approving Arctic Drilling
In Monday evening’s edition of network bias by omission, CBS and NBC neglected to stories concerning a data breach of American taxpayers at the scandal-ridden IRS and the Obama administration finally giving approval for a major oil company to begin oil drilling in the Arctic off Alaska’s coast. Surprisingly, ABC’s World News Tonight picked up the pieces and provided their viewers with coverage of…
AP Finds No Policy-Driven Causes Why Millennials Can't Buy Homes
Several commenters at my econ-related posts during the past several months here at NewsBusters and my home blog have noted how Washington's mix of high deficits, over-regulation, and quantitative easing never seem to get any kind of blame for the economy in establishment press coverage.
One could hardly find a better example of that deliberate avoidance than Josh Boak's writeup today at the…
Japan's Economy Contracts Again; Press Prescribes Even More 'Stimulus'
Japan, once a feared world economic powerhouse already at "two decades of little or no real economic growth," just reported that its economy contracted during the second quarter at an annual rate of 1.6 percent. The common thread throughout the two-decade slump has been the alleged need for ever-increasing levels of Keynesian "stimulus." Apparently refusing to believe there are any other…
AP Claims Social Security System Has 'Money,' Then Admits It Doesn't
Carrying water for the left as their pet programs implode while pretending to be an objective reporter is a daunting task. The Associated Press's Stephen Ohlemacher was not up to that task Thursday afternoon. Twice, in relatively early paragraphs of his 31-paragraph writeup, the AP reporter claimed that the Social Security system has "money." He then separately quoted a Democratic congressperson…
