Business Coverage

So that's why they call it "the graveyard shift."There's little the MSM likes more than to report the latest thing that's bad for us. Today's news brings a double-header of doom: night shifts and salt.First, the AP reports that the UN's World Health Organization will soon list working the night shift "as a 'probable' cause of cancer."Then Reuters informs us that the Center for Science in the…

Economic growth for the third quarter, which was estimated at 3.9% a month ago, was revised upward to 4.9% by the government's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The BEA announcement is here. This of course explains why a Google News search I just did on "recession" has hundreds and hundreds of articles talking about a possible recession, including 481 in the first 20 listings (/sarc). Key…

As the Christmas shopping season went into full swing in 2005, I sensed that journalists in general have a strong preference for using the term "holiday shopping" instead of "Christmas shopping" when covering business and commerce, but that when it came to people losing their jobs, they preferred to describe layoffs as relating to "Christmas." My instincts have been proven correct, as you can see…

Of course, the expectations game can be frustrating, and we won't know for sure until the actual report is released Thursday at 8:30 a.m. But there appears to be remarkably good economic news ahead. Naturally, it is getting the barest of coverage from an Old Media business press corps that seems intent on talking the economy down. First, a week ago Monday, MarketWatch's Greg Robb, in an article…

For years, NewsBusters and its parent, the Media Research Center, have been reporting on the disparity in economic coverage by mainstream media outlets during the Clinton and Bush administrations. In the past seven years, economic data that would have been praised when Bill Clinton was in the White House has continually been presented as recessionary, or even depression-like. With that in…

So, did you hear the United States was recently ranked by an independent, international economic think-tank as number one in global competitiveness? You didn't? Well, how could you, for according to LexisNexis, not one major American press outlet aside from Investor's Business Daily thought the announcement was important enough to share with the citizenry. I guess this would go too contrary…

*****Critical update at end of post: Yahoo switched articles inside the link about to be discussed!Was there a directive at the Associated Press on Friday for business writers to do their darnedest to bash the economy? After publishing a truly disgraceful column Saturday practically predicting a depression as a result of the current credit crunch, the AP offered readers an article about the…

*****Update at end of post includes detailed response to unhappy e-mail messages concerning this subject.As someone that has done a lot of economic writing and financial media analysis, I'm used to gloom and doom from journalists. However, Saturday's Associated Press article concerning the credit crunch and how it's impacting the mortgage market could be the worst example of economic and…

For years one of the great unanswered questions along Main and Wall streets has been why, in the midst of 24 consecutive quarters of uninterrupted growth, polls have regularly found Americans sour about the economy. On Tuesday, a battle between the New York Times liberal economics columnist Paul Krugman and WOR radio's Steve Malzberg offered a clue. In fact, after 16 minutes of sparring on…

Continuing the sky-is-falling mantra about lead laden toys, on Tuesday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Hannah Storm asked Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) spokeswoman, Julie Vallese:...you are standing there, Julie, among a whole group of toys, 61 recalls, a third of those because of lead paint. Why don't you tell us as parents, why we just shouldn't buy books and clothes and pets this…

On Sunday’s CBS "60 Minutes," anchor Lesley Stahl began a segment on calorie labeling for fast food by making this alarmist proclamation: "Obesity rates continue to spiral out of control in this country and nutritionists say one main reason is how dependent we've become on eating out." Enter the big government hero:Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden is in charge of regulating New York City's $11…

The Anchoress, a three-time Weblog Awards finalist and 2007 Catholic Blog Awards Winner (congratulations!) in the Best Political/Social Commentary category (scroll down at link to see it), delivered a cold but necessary shower earlier this evening to those of us who are tempted to exaggerate or overstate the impact New Media is having on most Americans. I'll bet that a lot of us can relay similar…