FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Stating quite succinctly how “there is an ongoing issue about whether global warming deniers should be treated seriously by the media, given that they have about as much scientific support for their position as the flat-Earth crew,” economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 7/11/09) notes how the July 11 “New York Times goes them one […]
Writing at his regular Beat the Press blog (7/8/09), economist Dean Baker says that the New York Times‘ David Leonhardt “rightly complains that President Obama’s healthcare plan does nothing to change the incentives for doctors to prescribe expensive forms of care, even when there is no evidence that this care will lead to better outcomes.” […]
Reacting to media noise over the economic costs of the Waxman-Markey environmental bill currently before the U.S. Congress, Dean Baker (ZNet, 7/1/09) looks to the damages of a different annual spending bill, this one perpetually unexamined in corporate news: Global Insight projected that after 20 years of higher defense spending, annual car sales would be […]
Tying the urgent present-day topic of economic reporting in with the most pressing global emergency of climate change, Dean Baker has posted at his Beat the Press blog (6/29/09) on “What Does ‘Free Trade’ Have to Do With Taxing Greenhouse Gas Emissions?”: That is the question that the New York Times should have been asking […]
Economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 6/20/09) has requested you try to “imagine a front-page Washington Post article that talked about how the United States had a shortage of small cars.” He reasonable assumes such a piece would address “the limited capacity of the various small-car assembly plants” and “discuss the amount of lead time […]
Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 6/14/09) has caught “Fox on 15th (a.k.a. ‘The Washington Post‘)” once again “departing from normal news practice” with “another editorial complaining about President Obama’s deficits on the front page.” The piece‘s subhead–“Concern Mounts in White House as 2010 Elections Loom”–prompts some hard questions from Baker: “Who is concerned? The story […]
Looking at last week’s “whole series of bad reports on the state of the economy,” Dean Baker of Beat the Press and the Center for Economic and Policy Research tells readers of London’s Guardian (6/1/09) if they think “these reports might have led to gloomy news stories,” such assessments are to be found “not in […]
Spotting a May 31 Washington Post column “that blamed the United Auto Workers for the bankruptcy of Chrysler and GM,” Dean Baker declares (Beat the Press, 5/31/09) that the D.C. daily “showed yet again why it is known as “Fox on 15th Street”: So what if Toyota has managed to profitably run a plant in […]
Blogging (Beat the Press, 5/26/09) about how the “New York Times Cooks the Books on Europe’s Auto Industry,” economist Dean Baker catches the paper “touting the layoffs in the U.S. auto industry as a virtue”–since “it notes that auto industry employment in Europe is remaining steady at around 2.3 million, while it is falling to […]
Yesterday the Social Security and Medicare trustees’ reports were released. This annual ritual often gives reporters a chance to exaggerate the long-term problems of the Social Security system. This year, the news was more or less what folks were expecting: By the trustees’ forecasting, Social Security’s trust fund will be depleted in 2037, while Medicare’s […]
Asking “Can We Get Reporters to Stop Saying That EFCA Takes Away the Secret Ballot?” Dean Baker bluntly states (Beat the Press, 5/7/09) that “it’s not true.” Even though this is one of the “most often repeated lines of the opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act”–“that it will deny workers the right to vote […]
While asserting the extremely simple journalistic principle that “Past Records Should Matter In Assessing Views on the Economy,” Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 5/2/09) is willing to admit that everyone makes mistakes, but the odds are that anyone who couldn’t see an $8 trillion housing bubble is not a really good person to rely upon […]
Asking a simple question about a large issue–“How Do Trillion Dollar Bank Bailouts Fit With ‘Free-Market Fundamentalism?’”–Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 4/19/09) tells his readers that “the obvious answer is, they don’t”–since, “if you are a free-market fundamentalist, then you are absolutely opposed to bank bailouts” that “involve taking taxpayer dollars and handing them to […]
Looking back over how corporate “media abandoned any pretense of objectivity in pushing the original TARP back in the fall,” when “they eagerly pushed the story that the economy would collapse if the TARP did not pass,” Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 3/28/09) recalls how “media never told the public that the Fed had the […]
Listening to “budget hawk” media figures who urge President Obama “to commit to spending cuts and/or tax increases” because they are “upset that the deficits projected for 2013 or 2019 are too large,” Dean Baker (TPM Café, 3/25/09) finds it especially annoying to hear the whining from this group of deficit hawks since their whining […]
Economics blogger Dean Baker asserts that “about the only thing that readers can learn from an article on Japan in the business section today” is that “The New York Times Doesn’t Like Japan” (Beat the Press, 2/22/09). Among the piece’s “variety of complaints about Japan’s economy, many of which are contradictory,” is “the standard line […]
There’s a trope that you often see in corporate media discussions of the stimulus plan: Yeah, but do you really want to spend money on that? It may have started with the misrepresented contraceptive plan—which seemed to be grounded in a traditional media fascination/embarrassment at anything involving sex—but now it’s moved on to anything that…well, […]
Today’s Washington Post (11/14/08) explains that Obama’s economic advisers “span the policy spectrum:” They include free traders and “fair traders,” deficit hawks, Wall Street executives, corporate moguls and labor advocates. Why the different typographical treatment of free trade and fair trade? The implication is that “free trade” really is free, whereas “fair trade” is just […]
The Associated Press (10/29/08) does its usual sad job trying to fact-check candidate statements—this time working a hefty dose of neo-Hooverism into the mix. AP‘s Calvin Woodward charges that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was less than upfront in his half-hour commercial Wednesday night about the costs of his programs and the crushing budget pressures […]
Fed up with “economic reporting [that] relies almost exclusively on experts who managed to overlook both the stock market bubble and the housing bubble,” Beat the Press blogger Dean Baker (10/6/08) writes that the Washington Post‘s Howard Kurtz “still misses some very fundamental points on the media’s reporting on the economy”: First, reporters should recognize […]
