FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 11/12/08) wants to know “Where’s the Ridicule?” since “Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced today that he had abandoned… his plan to buy bad assets from banks and other financial institutions.” Now that Mr. Paulson has himself decided that the Troubled Asset Relief Program is not a good idea (for which […]
Economist Dean Baker catches (Beat the Press, 11/8/08) a Washington Post piece that “tells us how the people who designed the bank bailout were committed to the free market.” But Baker is intrigued to note that, “interestingly, the key decisions that they made gave the banks much better terms than they could have received from […]
Recent Nobel laureate Paul Krugman uses his New York Times column (11/7/08) to answer the “many commentators” who are urging Mr. Obama to think small. Some make the case on political grounds: America, they say, is still a conservative country, and voters will punish Democrats if they move to the left. Others say that the […]
The relentless speculation over who should be in Obama’s cabinet continued in the Los Angeles Times, where readers were clued in to the debate over naming Larry Summers Treasury Secretary: Obama faces conflicting advice from his close advisers, from Capitol Hill and from important Democratic constituencies. Some argue that, with the economy gripped by a […]
Dean Baker finds (Beat the Press, 11/5/08) a Wall Street Journal economy article fails to support its editors’ headline–which itself just happens to support their own ideology: [The November 6 Jon Hilsenrath] article… told readers in the first sentence that “the U.S. government is on course for an unprecedented borrowing binge in coming months that […]
This Newsweek interactive feature that offers odds on Obama’s cabinet picks describes Lawrence Summers, who pushed for the policies that led to the financial crisis (Beat the Press, 11/5/08), as “A world-class economist, the former Harvard University president is valued for his deep experience in handling financial crises,” and calls Richard Holbrooke, whose impossible ultimatums […]
Tim Rutten writes today in the L.A. Times (11/5/08): What is perhaps most remarkable about the changed America to which we woke this morning is how the president-elect’s race seems, in most ways, the least remarkable thing about him. In large part, that’s a tribute to the fact that Barack Obama declined every opportunity […]
Blogging at A Tiny Revolution (11/2/08), Princeton professor Bernard Chazelle incisively conveys how corporate media not only uncritically disseminate bad economic forecasting, but contribute directly to such poor analysis: Economists are notoriously unable to predict anything but the past. Why? Yale Professor Robert Shiller, an exception to this rule, explains: Why do professional economists always […]
Dean Baker notices (Beat the Press, 11/02/08) “an obvious concern” completely missing from a long Washington Post piece in which “no one cited” thought that maybe “politicians at the [major upcoming economic] summit are too closely tied to the financial industry to promote regulations that will rein in abuses.” In fact, “while the paper had […]
Over the summer, the country’s two mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, collapsed, marking the definitive bursting of the housing bubble that began in the mid-1990s. Although it was the second major economic bubble in less than a decade, most in corporate media ignored the warning signs. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for […]
The rising cost of food was all over the news in the spring of 2008, from Fox News (“Food Prices Soaring World-wide,” 3/24/08) to CNN (“Rising Food Prices and Rising Concerns,” 4/21/08) to CBS (“Price of Rice Skyrockets,” 4/23/08). Everyone was covering the story. Many will never forget news clips of desperate Haitians rioting in […]
Corporate media economics reporters’ knee-jerk repetition of the “free trade” moniker has pushed things to the absurd point that Dean Baker is forced to ask (10/30/08) on his Beat the Press blog, “What Does It Mean to Support ‘Free Market’ Economics?”: New York Times readers no doubt asked this question when they saw that Charlie […]
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 […]
Economist Dean Baker is the highlight of a Politico feature (10/29/08) asking several political commentators the question, “Is the press really biased against McCain or does poor coverage reflect the reality of his campaign?”: No one would expect Saddam Hussein to get good press. The reality is that he was a pretty bad guy and […]
Posting on the Nation‘s blog (Notion, 10/25/08), Jon Wiener quotes from a Los Angeles Times story on the hardships being endured by spouses of workers on Wall Street, where “the average income is $365,000, according to the Times, ‘although top-flight managers typically make many millions more’”: “Wall Street wives are finding that they must defer […]
David Swanson comments (OpEd News, 10/27/08) on Rep. Barney Frank “having just blurted out the obvious but taboo fact that the U.S. military budget must be cut”: When a Congress member steps forward and courageously articulates a forbidden truth that is absolutely necessary for our survival and well-being (and by “our” I mean our species, […]
Dean Baker nails the New York Times‘ Ben Stein again for “telling people that it is important to save money in order to protect themselves against the sort of downturn that the economy is now seeing.” Baker writes (Beat the Press, 10/26/08) that while it’s obvious “people should try to put some money aside, most […]
Today New York Times reporter John Harwood wonders what happened to the idea, voiced in the aftermath of the 2004 election, that the country would see a long era of Republican dominance: How did such a turnabout happen so fast? In part, the answer stems from developments so rare that, as the former Federal Reserve […]
Bill Scher of the Campaign for America’s Future has some strong media criticism on AlterNet (10/23/08), focusing on an L.A. Times piece by Stephen Braun (10/23/08) that claims, as the headline says, “Obama and McCain in Denial About Deficits, Economists Say.” “The article repeatedly assumes budget deficits as unequivocally bad,” Scher notes, even though “many […]
Writing at the Columbia Journalism Review‘s website (10/17/08), Elinore Longobardi points out the pure absurdity of Newsweek‘s persistence in the role of economic cheerleader: In the October 20 cover story, Fareed Zakaria… explains the problem: Two decades of easy money and innovative financial products meant that virtually anyone could borrow any amount of money for […]
