Economy

Smartphone makers like Apple are partially to blame for violent muggings and the murder of at least one teenage girl young woman. While not explicitly stated on air, that was the logical implication of a segment of today's NewsNation program on MSNBC, guest-anchored by Craig Melvin and featuring Daily Beast special correspondent Michael Daly. "If you're walking around with a smartphone in…

Do Reuters writers even read Reuters? One has to ask this question because just a week after Lucia Mutikani of Reuters reported that the paltry 0.1 percent economic growth for the first quarter would probably be revised to show a contraction, Richard Cowan also of Reuters declared that a "rising" U.S. economy could help Democrats. To get an idea of the absurdity of these wildly contrasting…

"Millions of Americans could face new state taxes on their Internet access this fall, as Congress struggles with how to extend an expiring moratorium on such levies," the Wall Street Journal's John McKinnon reported in the May 6 paper, noting that the federal moratorium in the Internet Tax Freedom Act expires on November 1, 2014 and has, thus far seen Congress taking "few concrete steps to re-…

If I didn't know any better, I might have thought, based on an Associated Press report tonight by business writer Bernard Condon prepared with the help of four others, that governments everywhere had reinstituted child labor for those as young as six years old. That's the only way to support the claims Condon made about how the birth dearth in the developed world driven by the 2008 financial…

So the New York Times has found an onerous, creativity-stifling regulation it abhors. Naturally, they want a carve-out so it still impacts everyone else but, well, journalists and the corporations which hire them. Jack Nicas of the Wall Street Journal reported today that the New York Times Company is joining other journalistic enterprises like the Associated Press and Tribune Co. in "a joint…

In stark contrast to the celebratory "AMERICAN ECONOMY BOUNCES BACK FROM BRUTAL WINTER" headline Friday afternoon at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, Ben White's "Morning Money" report at the Politico is notably concerned about whether Friday's "vexing jobs report" justifies the kind of optimism the AP conveyed with seeming finality in its headline. To be fair, the…

This morning (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that Friday afternoon's coverage of the government's jobs report at the Associated Press by economics writers Christopher Rugaber and Josh Boak carried predictions of "nearly 3 percent" economic growth this year. Those predictions ignore how difficult achieving that will be after the first quarter's miserable 0.1 percent annualized result and…

In a Friday afternoon dispatch issued in the wake of the government's jobs report earlier that day, Christopher Rugaber and Josh Boak at the Associated Press wrote that "most economists ... forecast a strong rebound in economic growth - to a 3.5 percent annual rate in the current April-June quarter. And growth should reach nearly 3 percent for the full year, up from 1.9 percent in 2013, they…

In June 2006, the New York Times, over strident pleas not to from the Bush 43 administration, published details of how counterterrorism officials were "tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry." According to the administration, the program had "helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda…

On the Wednesday, April 30, Hardball with Chris Matthews, guest and MSNBC political analyst Howard Fineman -- formerly of Newsweek -- mocked Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's intent to visit impoverished areas as a plan to "introduce himself to the bro," and went on to complain that Ryan's budget "whacks away at" programs to help the poor.

There are so many things to mock about General Electric Vox from the fact that there is almost no Vox Populi (i.e. reader's comments) in Vox except for a narcissistic story celebrating itself after just three weeks on the web to Sarah Kliff reporting today with a straight face about how the White House considers that rising health care spending means ObamaCare is working. Perhaps the most…

General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt has made nice with President Barack Obama on several occasions. Among other things, he chaired the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which met a grand total of four times in 2011 and 2012 before it was unceremoniously allowed to expire a year later. He fully expected that his company would benefit from its involvement in green energy and its…

On Tuesday April 29, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-2 decision that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate air pollution from power plants that cross state lines yet NBC and ABC failed to cover the story. Despite the unprecedented ruling by the court, only CBS bothered to cover it, with Scott Pelley giving it a mere 22 seconds on the CBS Evening News on Tuesday…

Yesterday the Toyota Motor Corporation announced it would move its U.S. headquarters from Torrance, California, to Plano, Texas. Closing his report on the development, Tim Reid of Reuters noted the reaction of a Torrance business owner who doubtless counts many Toyota employees as loyal customers. "The taxes are lower in Texas. There are fewer regulations. It's cheaper for a company there. Why…