Bloomberg's 'Net Worth' Report Doesn't Even Tell Us What It Is
.... for what I believe is a painfully obvious reason. It is reports like the one written up by Shobhana Chandra at Bloomberg yesterday on household net worth that make you wonder if everyday US citizens will ever get the information needed to accurately evaluate what's going on in the economy without doing more digging than they have time for -- or that they should even have to do. Chandra's…
CBS's Foreclosure 'Crisis' Hype: 'American Dream Slipping Away
Delivering a ridiculous level of vacuous hyperbole, Thursday's CBS Evening News greeted reports of a 0.83 percent 4th quarter foreclosure rate with just under 6 percent of mortgages more than a month past due as proof “the American dream” is “slipping away” since “foreclosures are spreading like cancer.” Those may indeed be unusually high levels, but the American dream is hardly “slipping away”…
AP Writer Miscasts Housing Measurements to Hype Home-Value 'Crisis
On Wednesday, Associated Press Business Writer J.W. Elphinstone used a curious definition of "narrow" to emphasize the importance of a home-price measurement index that only looks at the country's largest metro areas, while minimizing the significance of one that catalogs virtually the entire USA -- all apparently done to create an overwrought portrayal of home values as being "in freefall."…
BMI’s Gainor Talks Depression Coverage on Fox Biz
BMI Vice President Dan Gainor took to the Fox Business Network Thursday to explain the difference between "depression," "recession" and "slow growth," terms the mainstream media has blurred.Economists "don't even agree that we're in a recession yet," Gainor said. "But then if you watch the network news shows, we're already up to eight times this year - that's once a week where they've made a…
LA Times Owner Blames US Economic Problems on Clinton and Obama
For years, NewsBusters and the Business and Media Institute have informed readers about how the press, since George W. Bush was first elected, have tried to create a self-fulfilling prophecy by misrepresenting economic data in as negative a way as possible.This is likely the cause of the public's continued pessimism about economic conditions even as the economy has expanded for 25 consecutive…
NYT’s Warped Sense of 'Average
Perhaps the average New York Times reader makes $250,000 a year, but the average American family? Not quite.And yet the Times, and its media colleagues, continue to feature sob stories from rich families in stories supposed to illustrate the pain the housing “crisis” is causing for middle- and lower-income families. “Not since the Depression has a larger share of Americans owed more on their…
AP Maximizes Negativity in Covering Realtors' Housing Report
Granted, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) is a trade organization which will, as trade organizations do, try to put the best face on a bad situation. And granted, part of the press's job is to filter through hype and false sunniness to report the truth of what's really going on. But that is most emphatically not what the Associated Press did with yesterday's NAR report on the state of…
'GMA' Warns Recession Fears Are Causing Arsons
Just when you thought the economic doom and gloom couldn't get any worse in the news, "Good Morning America" has determined recession is now causing arson. "We have news this morning on the home foreclosure front, word that cash-strapped homeowners are taking desperate measures," ABC co-host Diane Sawyer said. The February 11 "GMA" has determined "cash-strapped homeowners" are taking "…
Countrywide’s Mozilo Gives Up $37.5 Million; 'American Morning' Stil
In a class-warfare driven media, where the "haves" are often pitted against "have-nots," you would think an outgoing CEO giving up $37.5 million in pay would be celebrated. Not quite. CNN's "American Morning" didn't think it was quite good enough when Countrywide Financial's Angelo Mozilo forfeited $37.5 million in severance pay because he said he felt it was the "right thing to do." "It's…
Jon Stewart Mocks Financial Networks: 'Hot Ladies Talk Money with Bald
It's really frightening to imagine that people who get the bulk of their news from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" will be making what they probably think are educated decisions at the ballot box come Election Day. Stewart, who is now a self-proclaimed economist, said on his January 23 show, "Our economy is tanking." And now you can add financial media critic to Stewart's…
Soros Calls for Government Control of Markets, Even If It Means ‘Wip
Billionaire investor George Soros called for more government monitoring and involvement in markets in an interview on CNBC January 23."Now we really have to reconsider the whole policy, which has been in my opinion misplaced, of relying on the markets to police themselves," Soros told Maria Bartiromo in Davos, Switzerland, "to recognize the risks. And there are risks which it is the job of the…
U.S. News & World Report Editor Compares Credit Crisis to the Great De
It's no longer enough to say the economy is heading into or already is in a recession. Invoking the memory of the Great Depression has become the latest way to dramatize the economic turmoil caused by the credit markets. "[I] think we are facing the worst financial crunch and crisis since the Great Depression," Mort Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, said on the…
