Economy

Since the stock and credit market turbulence began in July, NewsBusters has been informing readers that media continually predict recessions that never happen.On the sad flipside, bearishness in the press can become so pervasive that an economic downturn ends up being an unfortunate self-fulfilling prophecy.NewsBusters affiliate the Business and Media Institute made this very point in a late-…

When Larry Summers suggested in early 2005 that, as paraphrased by Slate's William Saletan, "innate differences between the sexes might help explain why relatively few women become professional scientists or engineers," the outcry was immediate, furious, and went to saturation level virtually overnight. The controversy ultimately led to his resignation a year later as Harvard President. On…

The Democrats were finally able to get something passed in Congress, a new energy bill that mandates car gas mileage and bans the incandescent light bulb, and on Wednesday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Julie Chen described it as, "Congress's historic move to get rid of gas guzzlers." Co-host Harry Smith began the "historic" theme at the top of the show: Later this morning, the president will sign a…

Barely four years after California's historic recall of sitting Governor Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger's landslide election to replace him, the Golden State is, again, in a budget crunch of its own making. Oh, it's not as bad as the Gray days -- yet. The $35 billion budget deficit Davis papered over long enough to win reelection in 2002 over Bill Simon, with the help of the state's…

You know all that nonsense the media have been spewing that the Bush tax cuts caused the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer? Well, the Internal Revenue Service and the Congressional Budget Office have published tax and income numbers for 2005, and the press couldn't be any more wrong. In fact, it's almost as if the media get their data from Democrat presidential candidates, and…

The market is good for corn farmers right now. Corn prices are reaching highs because of the increased demand for food and as of late, the increased demand for corn-based ethanol. The price of corn is at an 11-year high. Its $4.38-a-bushel price tag is fueling food inflation, according to the December 17 "CBS Evening News." However, that's contrary to what CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr…

If you watched the news in the last 24 hours, you'd think women's clothing sales were the barometer for the economy. All three major networks reported a 6-percent decrease in women's apparel sales this holiday season, calling the figure "ominous," "worrisome" and "a big deal." The only problem is that the corporation reporting the figures, Mastercard, didn't say it was that big of a deal. In fact…

You'd hardly expect the chief Washington correspondent of business channel CNBC to negatively stereotype economic conservatives. But appearing on today's Morning Joe, the urbane John Harwood did just that.View video here.JOE SCARBOROUGH: [Huckabee is] a different type of evangelical. It's not the evangelical in American politics that's traditionally been very conservative economically. Obviously…

Prior to her "tear" question, which Mika Brzezinski asked only minutes before on MSNBC, CNN’s Kiran Chetry did direct one tough question to Hillary Clinton on Monday's "American Morning," concerning the Boston Globe’s endorsement of Barack Obama and the paper’s criticism of her campaign. "'The Boston Globe' endorsed Senator Obama, saying about you, in fact, 'her approach is needlessly defensive,…