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FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.

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Articles about: Economy
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January 30, 2009
Dean Baker on stimulus package, Michael Ratner on torture ‘loopholes’

Dean Baker on stimulus package, Michael Ratner on torture ‘loopholes’

[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin013009 Dean Baker and Michael Ratner @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin013009.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: After several weeks of media debate, the House passed a nearly 900 billion dollar economic stimulus package. White House efforts to reach out to Republicans resulted in exactly zero GOP voters, leaving some in the media to wonder if Obama was […]

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January 29, 2009

Media ‘Grading [GOP] on a Curve’

Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall (1/28/09) is bemoaning how “Republicans have been getting a lot of air time and minimal press criticism for a series of arguments about the stimulus that are in most cases transparently ridiculous”: For instance, I heard several House Republicans yesterday making the straight up argument that the renovation of […]

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January 29, 2009

When Journalistic Liabilities Exceed Assets

Economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 1/28/09) points to an embarrassingly simple contradiction in the premise of Washington Post staff writer David Cho’s worry that government plans to give cash to failing banks in exchange for current investors’ shares “could also precipitate a sell-off across the banking system as investors flee, fearing they could be […]

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January 28, 2009

Bubble Alert!

A New York Observer profile of NBC Washington bureau chief Mark Whitaker looks at the differences between D.C., where Whitaker is now stationed, and New York City, where he’s spent most of his career. (OMB chair Peter Orzag can turn heads at a D.C. party, but in NYC, no less than Beyoncé or Tom Cruise […]

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January 28, 2009

Limbaugh: The ‘Kineesians’ Are Coming!

Attacking the White House’s proposed economic stimulus plan (1/26/09), Rush Limbaugh explained that the issue pits his favored “supply-siders,” who see the holy grail in tax cuts, against what he repeatedly referred to as, at least what sounded like “kineesian economists,” who he described as partial to “government spending on shovel-ready projects of all kinds.” […]

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January 26, 2009

Krugman Debunks Bogus Stimulus Critics

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman helpfully debunks (1/26/09) some of the more tendentious and misleading criticisms of the White House’s economic stimulus package. Here’s one such trope: First, there’s the bogus talking point that the Obama plan will cost $275,000 per job created. Why is it bogus? Because it involves taking the cost of […]

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January 19, 2009

When Corporations Report on Corporations

Asking the deceptively simple question, “More Bank Bailouts: Who Gets the Money?”, Beat the Press blogger Dean Baker has another telling example (1/18/09) of biases in media corporations’ reportage on corporate economics: The Washington Post made reducing the pay of autoworkers by $4.00 an hour a central theme of its coverage (both news and editorial) […]

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January 17, 2009

‘Build Out a Better Internet for Everyone’

Recalling how “too often, government has tried to expand Internet access by giving public money to massive phone and cable companies” and only gotten “tax dollars squandered,” to the point that “Americans now face few market choices, and pay high prices for speeds that are far too slow,” the folks at Free Press are now […]

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January 15, 2009

Selective Economics at the Washington Post

Dean Baker knocks down (Beat the Press, 1/15/09) the logic behind the already specious alarm about supposedly overpaid autoworkers: The Washington Post has repeatedly editorialized that auto workers at the Big Three companies should be forced to take pay cuts because they earn $57,000 a year, which is more than workers get at the foreign-owned […]

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January 12, 2009

Breaking News: Bush Record Nothing to Envy!

Today’s Washington Post (1/12/09) brings news that will probably surprise very few readers: President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, and economists across the ideological spectrum increasingly view his two terms as a time of little progress on the nation’s […]

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January 12, 2009

Three Strikes on Healthcare at the Post

Noting that the project of “‘solidifying’ the finances of Social Security” is properly characterized as “an obsession of the [Washington] Post,” and not the “Fundamental Fiscal Issue” corporate media generally report it as, Beat the Press blogger Dean Baker explains (1/12/09) yet again that “the program can pay all benefits through the year 2049 with […]

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January 1, 2009

Scapegoating Minorities for Failures of Banking

It seems, on the face of it, a theory too absurd to even be taken seriously: A ragtag band of anti-poverty activists pushes the White House into forcing lenders to make bad loans to poor and minority borrowers, setting off a subprime loan crisis that puts the entire global economy at risk. Yet in the […]

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January 1, 2009

Going All Out for Bank Bailout

During the week of September 15, the country’s economic leaders did a quick 180-degree turn: They went from assuring us that the economy was just fine to telling us that the bottom was about to fall out and a second Great Depression loomed just over the horizon. The one hope was a massive $700 billion […]

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January 1, 2009

Misleading Indicators

“The start of a new year is a good time to take stock,” wrote the Washington Post on January 3, 2007, “and there are few better indicators of our long-term economic prospects—and also our prospects for political and social peace—than productivity.” Yet while productivity, or output per hour, rose an average 2.5 percent annually between […]

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December 21, 2008

‘The Bad News About the News’

Veteran publisher Tom Engelhardt’s rundown on the decimation of book publishers’ staff (TomDispatch, 12/17/08) compares “collapsing worlds” with newspapers–“a disaster area long before the greatest downturn ‘since the Great Depression’ hit”: The bad news about the news has been flooding in for years, even if it’s worsened under the weight of more general economic tough […]

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December 18, 2008

Does CBS Think the CBS Poll Doesn’t Count?

Discussing the failed auto bailout on CBS Evening News (12/12/08): KATIE COURIC: And it’s almost, meanwhile, turning to Washington, Bob, impossible to figure out just what happened to this auto bailout in the Senate. There’s all this finger pointing going on. What is your take? Can you explain it to us in simple terms? BOB […]

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December 12, 2008

FAIR Radio on Tribune Bankruptcy and Union Card Check

The new edition of FAIR’s radio show CounterSpin (12/12/08) examines the financial collapse of a major U.S. media force: The Tribune Company that owns the Chicago Tribune and the L.A. Times, along with much else, declared bankruptcy this week, just a year after new owner Sam Zell took over, with his notable lack of background […]

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December 12, 2008

Economy ‘Experts’ in Need of Qualifiers

Blogging economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 12/12/08) gives the New York Times headline “Goldman, Once Warning of $200 Oil, Sees $45 in 2009” as an example of his radical idea that “this is exactly what the media should be doing when they present forecasts from various experts”: For example, when they share the views […]

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December 12, 2008

Newspaper Journalism a Lost Cause?

The dismal state of corporate newspaper journalism has Philadelphia Inquirer columnist George Curry reconsidering (12/11/08) the value of his lifelong dedication to improving the trade: I have spent most of my career urging young people to consider careers in journalism. I was founding director of workshops affiliated with the National Association of Black Journalists chapters […]

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December 11, 2008

Tribune Tanks, CEO Skates

Harold Meyerson’s latest dispatch (WashingtonPost.com, 12/8/08) on Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell retells how “Zell repeatedly and profanely expressed his disdain for quality journalism,” gutting major dailies like the L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune because he thought they “carried too much national and international news.” After “hundreds of excellent reporters and editors were unceremoniously shown […]

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