Despite Media, Buffett Recession Obsessions, 1Q Growth Revised Up

May 29th, 2008 10:05 AM
Matching predictions from Reuters and Bloomberg, the government's Bureau of Economic Analysis told us this morning that the economy grew at an upwardly-revised annualized rate of 0.9%. As I've said frequently, this is nowhere near acceptable. But it sure as heck isn't a recession.Initial reaction to the news by the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa was unfortunately predictable (bolds are mine…

Why the AP Is the Way It Is, and Where It's Going

May 24th, 2008 6:59 PM
Anyone wishing to understand why leftist bias pervades US "mainstream" media reporting will benefit from reading Steve Boriss's May 18 column ("Is the Associated Press Good for America?") at Pajamas Media. Boriss quickly runs down the history, and gets right to the point: The self-described "not-for-profit cooperative" has a history of acting as a monopolist:

Taranto Nails Recession Obsession of AP's Aversa

May 24th, 2008 9:18 AM
..... But Misses Chance to Refute "Jobs Slashed" Claims. It's good to see that someone else is on the case of the recession-obsessed Associated Press, particularly reporter Jeannine Aversa. But even the estimable James Taranto, in his Best of the Web column yesterday, let Aversa's most obvious and repeated error go by without comment. Aversa started out her report yesterday ("When economy…

AP, Bloomberg, and Some Economists Defining Recession Upward

May 19th, 2008 10:23 AM
The business press's recession obsession continues:A couple of weeks ago, in the wake of the initial first-quarter GDP growth reading of 0.6%, Rex Nutting at MarketWatch.com entertained us with the notion that an economy can be in a recession even while there is real, if anemic, economic growth.Today, Jeannine Aversa of the Associated Press, with the help of a number of economists, told us that…

AP: 'Good Economic News Something of a Mirage

May 10th, 2008 4:57 PM
In the past several months, NewsBusters has seriously questioned the reporting of the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa given her proclivity to misrepresent economic data.On Saturday, Aversa wrote an opinion piece that fully explained why she sees gloom and doom in every government statistic regardless of whether or not it's warranted.Here's how Aversa began her analysis entitled "Good Economic…

AP Disgrace: 'Bruised Economy Grows by Only 0.6 Percent

April 30th, 2008 9:47 AM
The Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa really should change her writing focus, because economics is clearly not her specialty.After telling readers in March that "Dangerous cracks in the nation's job market" are "ominous signs that the country is falling toward a recession or has already toppled into one," Aversa had the gall to report Wednesday, "The bruised economy limped through the first…

AP: Is It 'Recession No Longer a Question' or 'Widening Agreement

April 5th, 2008 12:58 PM
Is it just me, or is the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa doing an end-zone dance because she thinks that the recession Old Media has been pining for has finally arrived? Someone needs to remind her that one negative quarter, if it even occurs, does not a recession make. In an early-Saturday story on the economy, Aversa treated the recession as a lock in her first paragraph, even though the…

Old Media's Seasonally Ignorant Employment Reporting

April 4th, 2008 6:03 PM
Did you know that 574,000 and 1.1 million more Americans had jobs in March than in February and January, respectively? Seriously, as you can see on the right (data can be retrieved from this BLS page; select the very first "not seasonally adjusted" table). Now the fact remains, as you can also see, that job growth during the past two months is nowhere near as great as it was during the same two…

Weak Job Data Cause Media to Forget the Definition of a Recession

January 4th, 2008 4:49 PM