Business Coverage

ABC News is having a banner week. First it was forced to acknowledge that reporter Brian Ross had smeared an innocent member of the Colorado Tea Party (and Tea Partiers more broadly) by speculating on-air that Aurora killer James Holmes might be a Tea Party member of the same name.  Now, because it’s hysterical reporting harmed an industry and cost hundreds of jobs, an Iowa radio station…

The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission  (CPSC) is taking a company to court to make it stop producing their popular Buckyballs magnetic desk toy, even though the company markets the product to adults and includes warnings that the toy is unsafe around children. That's right, it's a desk toy marketed to adults, the vast majority of whom will keep them at their desk at work -- a…

No matter how inane or damning his comments and answers to inquiries, it appears that Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner can continue to count on favorable coverage from the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, aka the Administration's Protection. The AP's Marcy Gordon, with the help of her story's headline writer, made Geither's appearance before the House Committee on…

I suppose the Associated Press deserves some credit for what appears to be a grudging acknowledgment that opponents of the oil and gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, aka "fracking," "sometimes mislead the public." Also, Kevin Begos's story does a good job of letting Josh Fox, producer of the fundamentally dishonest documentary "Gasland," hang himself with his own dodgy,…

In an article for NBCNews.com's First Read on Monday, Domenico Montanaro eagerly proclaimed to readers: "Mitt Romney has criticized President Obama for his 'you didn't build that' line, when it came to businesses....But in 2002, during his speech at the Opening Ceremonies at the Winter Olympics....Romney made a similar argument about Olympians." Romney simply told the Olympic athletes – many…

Gosh, if Apple would only send the money it has parked overseas back to the United States and pay income taxes on it, the federal government's situation would be so much better, the budget would would balance, and ... no, not really. According to Peter Svensson at the Associated Press, the company has $74 billion in cash parked overseas, meaning that it would owe federal income taxes of about $…

The left, including the Obama administration and some in the media, are making anti-capitalist attacks on opponent Mitt Romney’s business career the latest tactic. And the gloves are off. On July 12, Obama’s deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter went on the offensive charging Romney could be a criminal: “Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting…

Four days after President Obama insulted job creators by asserting "If you've got a business, you didn't build that; somebody else made that happen," CNN finally reported the controversial remarks, and only once the Romney campaign featured them in a campaign attack. In contrast, when Romney surrogate John Sununu said on Tuesday morning that he wished "this President would learn how to be an…

In case you missed it (which wouldn't be surprising given how quiet the press has been since the related report's release, the Department of Labor reported that initial claims for unemployment rose to a seasonally adjusted 386,000 from a review (up, or course) 352,000 the previous week. An unbylined Reuters report carried at CNBC (HT to an NB tipster) bizarrely described this result as a "…

Todays unemployment claims release from the Department of Labor reported that initial jobless aid applications for the week ended July 14 were 386,000 after seasonal adjustment. Business Insider's email this morning carried a prediction of 364,000. Bloomberg's consensus prediction was 365,000. At the Associated Press, in his 8:45 a.m. dispatch (saved here for future reference, fair use and…

Here's how a "Business Highlights" item at the Associated Press summarized the situation between Timothy Geithner and London banks whose officials had admitted to rigging the London Interbank Offered Rate ("Libor") on Friday evening: "The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released documents Friday that show it learned five years ago of big banks understating their borrowing costs to manipulate a…

Over the weekend President Obama once again demonized wealth creators, downplaying the success of entrepreneurs as something that "[s]omebody else made... happen": There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back.  They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on…

One might think that yours truly, who has been nagging the establishment press for years over its blind acceptance of seasonally adjusted data in government economic and employment reports, would be pleased to see that the Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber finally got around to making such adjustments the primary focus of his final report on the most recently released unemployment claims…

My, it was awfully nice of Marcy Gordon at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, to give Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner such excellent protection in her report on the New York Federal Reserve Bank's release of documents relating to its knowledge of the manipulation of the "Libor" (London interbank offered rate) used as the basis for the pricing of trillions of dollars of loans…