Economy

I've said for years that some of the worst reporting by the media deals with issues of finance and the economy. "Real Time" watchers were given a perfect example of this Friday evening when a college professor that contributes to MSNBC as well as Nation magazine actually said, "I’ll put my Obama deficit next to your Reagan deficit any day of the week" (video follows with transcript and…

An hour before the disastrous June jobs report was released yesterday morning, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell chatted with "Fox & Friends" anchor Brian Kilmeade about the media's spin job on the Obama economy. [See video of the segment embedded below the page break]

The latest Social Security Trustees Report tells us that the program will be insolvent by the year 2037. The combined unfunded liability of Social Security and Medicare has reached nearly $107 trillion in today's dollars. That is about seven times the size of the U.S. economy and 10 times the size of the national debt. Those entitlement programs, along with others, account for nearly 60 percent…

Imagine, if you will, that in 2003 Fox News brought on a disgraced Bush administration official who had been barred from Wall Street trading to talk up the president's economic policies. Imagine also that the anchor doing the interview failed to disclose that fact to viewers. Well, that's pretty much what happened in the 2 p.m. Eastern hour of MSNBC coverage today, when anchor Thomas Roberts…

An otherwise straightforward report on bad economic news on Friday's NBC Today cited economist Diane Swonk, who argued government stimulus prevented things from getting worse: "We basically had a massive coronary during the financial crisis....Financial stimulus and monetary stimulus, you know, got us to the stage where we're healing but we're in still in a lot of rehab." Correspondent Tom…

William F. Buckley Jr. once said his job was to "stand athwart history, yelling stop!" If more liberals took this advice, they wouldn't end up looking like two CNN anchors who just don't know when to say no to unsustainable deficit spending. On the eve of a disappointing jobs report in which the unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent, CNN International's Richard Quest plowed ahead like the…

Do you think it's conceivable that yet another round of dismal economic news might cause President Obama to finally dig deeply enough in his id to find some hidden humility and consider reversing course? Let's be serious. Why should he do that when it's much easier — and more profitable politically — to just demonize Republicans?

On Friday's Early Show, before the new 9.1% unemployment figure came out, CBS's Dean Reynolds bewailed how President Obama is being "saddled" by the "stubbornly sluggish economy." Reynolds played up how "GM, Ford, and Chrysler have all returned to profitability," and tracked down a beneficiary of the auto industry bailout, who sang the praises of the Democrat. [Audio clips from Reynolds's…

CNBC panelists and guests always make predictions in the minutes leading up to the Labor Department's release of the jobs report and June 3 was no exception. While economists Diane Swonk and Mark Zandi and CNBC's own Steve Liesman all made predictions of job gains between 100,000 and 150,000 - Rick Santelli threw his own lower prediction in just seconds before the announcement: 55,000. (…

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Thursday got a much-needed economics lesson from CNBC's Joe Kernen. In the midst of a discussion about the economy and how it's going to impact the 2012 elections, the "Hardball" host bragged about having studied economics in grad school leading Kernen to marvelously ask, "You studied economics?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Is AP reporter Christopher Rugaber taking yours truly's admonishments to heart? Either he is, or there were a number of odd coincidences in his reports today (early; later) on the small drop in initial unemployment claims (to 422,000, from an upwardly revised 428,000 the previous week) reported by the Department of Labor this morning. Last week (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I criticized…

When National Review's Jim Geraghty noted on CNN Thursday that the national unemployment rate has been higher through Obama's two years in office than at any time during Bush's two terms, and that the news could hurt Obama in the upcoming election, CNN's Ali Velshi would have none of it. Velshi interrupted Geraghty and sternly rebuked his premise, decreeing that "with all due respect, that's…

In an exchange with Pat Buchanan on Thursday’s “Morning Joe,” MSNBC reporter Norah O’Donnell demonstrated just how out of touch she is when it comes to her view of the state of the American economy (video follows page break): 

In her lead story Wednesday, "Pressing Obama, House Bars Rise For Debt Ceiling," New York Times reporter Jackie Calmes accused Republicans of not understanding the debt limit while softening Democratic calls for higher taxes by portraying the Democrats as merely seeking "higher revenues." The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a measure to increase the government’s debt limit, acting on…