Business Coverage

If you listened to any top-of-the-hour radio newscast yesterday, you probably heard that General Motors has exited from bankruptcy, with the company promising to really, really do better this time around.You more than likely didn't hear anything about how much government money it has taken to enable GM to survive and reemerge. That's because original story sources like the Associated Press put…

This was inevitable.  When the Obama administration effectively took over General Motors, Obama-friendly media hacks were going to tout the company's products . . .And so it was that on his MSNBC show this evening, Ed Schultz offered up an unpaid infomercial for GM's new Camaro.  Most grotesque was Schultz's boast that the Camaro was outselling the Ford Mustang. Take that, private-sector company…

Joe Biden is coming to Cincinnati to tout the stimulus plan. A local TV station is thrilled.If this is considered a good way to use stimulus money, we're in $800 billion worth of big trouble:The entire nation is about to get a look at exactly how federal stimulus money is being spent in the Tri-State. Tomorrow morning, Vice-President Joe Biden will be in Northside to look at how that neighborhood…

TASS probably couldn't have done it better. And NBC correspondent Jim Maceda seemed to be channeling that Soviet Russia official state-run news agency in his glowing account of Russia Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's heavy-handed dealings with some small businesses. Putin was, he said, "combating Russia's deep recession hand-to-hand." Maceda, in a July 6 "Nightly News" segment, spoke admiringly…

In the later paragraphs of a story today about the latest hurdle bailed-out General Motors has managed to jump to get out of bankruptcy, the Associated Press's Bree Fowler almost totally ignored the impact of Ford's improvement largely at GM's expense during the first half of 2009, acting as if GM's decline has almost solely been the result of defections to foreign competitors.Fowler's only…

Oh. So. Predictable -- Both what is happening, and how it is being "covered."Chrysler is barely out of bankruptcy, and there is already concern as to whether the money Uncle Sam, (i.e., U.S. taxpayers) funneled into the company -- while in the process of ripping off and intimidating its secured creditors, capriciously terminating plants and dealers, and running roughshod over long-held notions of…

Part 1 ("The Big Picture") is here.Quick:Which company sold the most light trucks in the U.S. in June?Which company came in at Number 9 in car sales in June, down from Number 7 a year ago?Aren't smaller players in the auto industry obviously gaining ground on the big guys because of their small, fuel-efficient cars?If you don't know the answers to these questions, it's because the press has been…

We are now six months into the failed Auto Bailout Era. Looking at the industry's four biggest companies, it has become clear that Ford is on the rise, General Motors continues to slip badly, Chrysler is fading into minor-player status, and Toyota's ongoing struggles continue. In May, after April's sales results came out, two Associated Press writers noted Ford's ascendancy and uniquely hinted at…

At the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web today, Jim Taranto noted that it took the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa until the 15th paragraph of her expanded dispatch on today's Employment Situation Report to find something mildly positive to write.Aversa, who has been one of the wire service's chief silver lining make-up artists during the Obama presidency's disastrous economic stewardship…

Either "CNBC Reports" anchor Dennis Kneale has a flair for the dramatic or he upset a lot of people in the blogosphere with his biting critique of the blogosphere's negativity on the economy. On the July 1 broadcast of "CNBC Reports," Kneale responded to harsh, angry criticism from bloggers - even pointing out blogs like the Huffington Post, with an openly left-of-center perspective. "Last…

While many on the left are reveling in the downfall of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford after he disclosed his affair with a woman in Argentina, there's a sympathetic figure being overlooked that might have the necessary background to fill the void left by the governor should he resign. On CNBC's June 30 "The Kudlow Report," Wall Street Journal senior economics writer Steve Moore explained his…

Got this e-mail earlier this afternoon, which pretty much says it all about ABC's news priorities:The links in the e-mail are after the jump.

As we near the end of June, which is supposed to be one of the four biggest months for federal tax collections (January, April, and September are the others), it is clear that the serious receipts shortfalls are not only continuing, but have caused the March 20 projections of the administration and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to be outdated.Media coverage of the ongoing receipts dive…

ABC's online "The Note" describes itself as "Washington's Original and Most Influential Tipsheet." ABC News's Senior Political Reporter Richard Klein is its current content creator. We'll see how influential "The Note" really is if what Klein writes about the machinations behind the attempt to make us forget that the Obama stimulus plan was supposedly going to be making some kind of difference…