Latest Blogs

BMI Staff | October 25, 2006
CNN's War on the Economy As the election nears, CNN is pushing the war on the middle class throughout its broadcasts. According to its reporters and…
Ken Shepherd | October 25, 2006

     Less than two weeks before the November elections, an NBC “Today” show co-host asked, “are we being manipulated” by falling gas prices. Reporter Carl Quintanilla dismissed the idea but still cast “Big Oil” and…

Ken Shepherd | October 24, 2006

     Gas prices hit their lowest point since January and the Dow Jones closed on yet another record high, but on the October 24 evening newscast CBS’s Katie Couric colored her business briefing in red, focusing on Ford Motor Company’s (NYSE: F)…

Julia A. Seymour | October 24, 2006

     It’s basic economics: if demand for something goes up, so will the price – especially if the supply is limited.

 

     The number of available airplane seats is limited approaching…

Dan Gainor | October 24, 2006

    It took 31 years, but Newsweek magazine admitted it was incorrect about climate change. In a nearly 1,000-word correction, Senior Editor Jerry Adler finally agreed that a 1975 piece on global cooling “was so spectacularly wrong…

Ken Shepherd | October 24, 2006

     The Dow Jones Industrial Average set an all time record on October 19, closing a few points about 12,000. Yet only ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson” led the newscast with the news, while CBS’s Katie Couric dismissed…

Julia A. Seymour | October 23, 2006

     T-Rex. The Dodo bird. The middle class?

 

     According to many CNN anchors and reporters, the extinction of the middle class is looming, and “In the Money” advanced the theory on…

Ken Shepherd | October 23, 2006

    “Freshman 15 down to just 8,” blared an October 23 USA Today headline. But reporter Nanci Hellmich still found an appetite for worry about college students’ eating habits in her Life section article.

 

 …

Ken Shepherd | October 20, 2006

     Conspiracy theories involving Republicans and “Big Oil” are more newsworthy to The Washington Post than an international oil cartel’s moves to pump up prices.

     While The Washington Post recently highlighted in its Business…

Julia A. Seymour | October 20, 2006

     The Weather Channel already tells viewers to stay inside during bad weather, but a new campaign also tells them what to think and do about global warming.

 

      The channel’s…

Julia A. Seymour | October 19, 2006

     Lou Dobbs’s hour-long special “War on the Middle Class” should have been titled “Vote for Bigger Government This Election Year.”

     With barely an attempt at journalistic objectivity, against the backdrop "America Votes 2006," …

Ken Shepherd | October 18, 2006

     Are you happy that gas prices are down to earth again? Good, now’s the perfect time to tax you more for it, if only it wasn’t political suicide to do so.

    That’s the tone Washington Post reporter Steve Mufson took in his October…

Ken Shepherd | October 18, 2006

     Hours before Lou Dobbs’s “War on the Middle Class” special was set to air on CNN, the October 18 New York Times poked holes in one of the fears Dobbs has often peddled to viewers –  the “threat” to the U.S. auto…

Herman Cain | October 18, 2006

     When we were kids, network anchors like Walter Cronkite read us news each night like parents telling stories. But as we’ve grown older, the nightly news stories have transformed into grim fairy tales about some terrifying threat to you and…

BMI Staff | October 18, 2006
A Massive Reporting Deficit Networks have spun the federal deficit negatively 35 times since the State of the Union address. Only once did a journalist…
Ken Shepherd | October 18, 2006

     “The middle class still says generally it feels like the American Dream is a lost cause.”

     Thus began the last 12 hours of CNN’s in-house PR push for Lou Dobbs’s October 18 special “War on the Middle Class.” Dobbs himself has…

Amy Menefee | October 18, 2006

     Since the 2006 State of the Union address, the networks have complained about the deficit and called it “soaring,” “ballooning,” “record high” and “exploded.”

     Though the deficit has trended steadily downward by billions of…

Ken Shepherd | October 17, 2006

     The second day into Prescription For Change, a weeklong series on American health care, ABC News revealed its recent poll found nearly 9 out of 10 Americans are happy with their health care. But rather than finding the statistic an…

Ken Shepherd | October 16, 2006

     In search of a “Prescription for Change” for “fixing American health care,” anchor Dan Harris of ABC’s “World News Sunday” promised viewers a weeklong look at “one of the most urgent and expensive issues facing this country.” But the…

Rachel Waters | October 13, 2006

     “Support Environmentalists With a Rope.”

     On the October 11 “Moyers on America” show, titled “Is God Green?” Rocky Barker used these five words to sum up Republican sentiment towards environmentalists. Barker, environmental…