Economy

In any other industry, when revenues fall steeply, those in charge take at least a casual look at the quality of their product, and try to get a grip on whether it's meeting consumers' needs and expectations. But that never seems to happen in the news business. True to form, the New York Times's Richard Perez-Pena devoted over 850 words to the latest developments, and had nothing to say about…

The network news outlets - ABC, CBS and NBC - have missed a great opportunity to cover actual political news in the last week by failing to report on the loan scandal surrounding two Democratic senators, Business & Media Institute Managing Editor Amy Menefee told "Fox & Friends Weekend" June 21."This story has everything," Menefee said. "It has a former presidential candidate, Chris Dodd…

Who says the Washington Post never reports the downsides of socialized medicine? In a story below the fold on the June 23 Business section front page, staffers Kendra Marr and Ariana Eunjung Cha took a look at how a Bethesda, Md., company is setting out to make money by capitalizing on dissatisfaction with China's socialized medical system. Marr and Cha look at how Bethesda-based Chindex…

UPDATE: Hard to imagine, but it's even worse than originally thought. AP's go-to "historian" is, as Wikipedia shows, a shameless politically active far-leftist (HT Eric at Vocal Minority). _______________________(begin original post) Two Associated Press writers, with the help of accompanying photos at ABCnews.com, have dug down deep and reached a new low in dismal, depressive reporting. You can…

Give Hanna Rosin at The Atlantic Online credit for investigating something most journalists wouldn't even think of touching. Her article is a long read, but an important one. Rosin's report out of Memphis (HT Instapundit) chronicles how a criminologist husband and his housing-expert wife made a correlation that makes so much sense, you just know it will encounter fierce resistance from media and…

If, as shown yesterday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), media reporters can't even get basic things like the fact that $1.74 x 3.5 doesn't equal anything close to $4 right, you would think that it's way too much to expect them to understand the difference between income and net worth. You would be correct. The coverage of last week's Social Security tax-increase proposal by Democrat Barack Obama…

This could be perhaps the most bizarre application of James Carville's worn out expression, "It's the economy stupid." "CBS Evening News" linked the economy to the famed pregnancy pact that has received national attention. The June 19 broadcast of "Evening News" faulted the ailing economy for 17 Massachusetts high school students agreeing to get pregnant intentionally around the same time so…

Not a mere hell-freezes-over-moment.  Call it–in honor of Chinese Olympic diving which made the NY Times today–a a triple-twisting forward three-and-a-half flying pig, pike position.  An MSM reporter has condemned socialist big-government programs, adding a pitch for unrestrained free-market forces.  Check the end of this item for a factoid making the moment even more remarkable.CNBC's Michelle…

Survey question: If the media had the results of three independent surveys of corporate executives about the economy and two of them were more negative than the third, which one wouldn't get much coverage?In the last few days, three such surveys have been released. Two of them - the Business Roundtable's quarterly CEO Economic Outlook Index and the Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business…

It's not just the Associated Press that can't get basic facts right. No wonder Barack Obama doesn't get challenged by the media on fundamentals -- y'know, things like how many states there are in the union (he says 57 or so), whether Illinois is closer to Kentucky than Arkansas (he says it's not), or whether Warren Buffett's income (!) is $56 billion (Obama seems to think that income and net…

Recently the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star subjected its readers to another fine example of sloppy journalism aimed at exalting the Obama candidacy. It is so bad, so pointless, so filled with empty platitudes and meaninglessness that one might suspect it was written by Barack Obama himself instead of a reputed journalist. But it is a perfect example of the sort of slavish devotion the Illinois…

As we've noted at NewsBusters, there's been scant coverage of a new scandal involving Sens. Chris Dodd (Conn.) and Kent Conrad (N.D.). Both senators chair committees with oversight of the financial industry and Dodd is behind a bailout package for mortgage lender Countrywide. Both senators got "VIP" treatment from Countrywide Financial for refinancing agreements on their respective mortgages.So…