Free Republic

Trade Secrets: ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight’ Hides Good News Behind Negative View of Free Market CNN promotes “Lou Dobbs Tonight” as “news, debate and opinion.” But it doesn’t explain that Dobbs defines those words his own unique way. “News” is often economic distortions presented as fact. “Debate” doesn’t always mean that both sides get to comment. And, for Dobbs, opinion is something injected into every aspect of a news report. Dobbs heads an hour-long news and “business” show that assaults business, rails against free trade and relies on union members to paint a dreary economic picture. Yet the network that advertises...

Media’s bad news bears deliver negative news 62 percent of the time despite economic expansion.* Economic news heavily negative: Coverage of economic news on the three broadcast networks was negative 62 percent of the time, despite ongoing good news of more jobs, low unemployment and economic growth. * Good news undermined: Even when good news made it to viewers, journalists undermined it with bad news 45 percent of the time. * Negative stories given more air time: Good news stories were relegated to briefs roughly two thirds of the time. Negative news received longer stories and outnumbered positive stories by...

When do journalists repeatedly cover something that the medical community agrees is bogus? When the man behind those claims is named Kennedy. CBS added itself to the list of media outlets that have given coverage to a discredited claim linking a preservative that contains mercury, thimerosal, in children’s vaccines to autism. As a result, it gave a left-wing “environmentalist” a chance to further his hidden global warming agenda on national television. On CBS’s “Evening News” on July 14, 2005, anchor Bob Schieffer called the link between autism and mercury a “controversy,” even though he said medical experts did not believe...

The Live 8 concerts were tuned to a rare collaboration of politics and music. Organizer and rock star Bob Geldof used the July 2, 2005, event to pressure wealthy nations into increasing foreign aid to Africa. The international performance left the TV media seeing stars and unable to report on Live 8 as anything other than a “good cause.” News people awed by celebrities delivered one-sided accounts about African poverty that were light on facts and heavy on promotion. Even after the event, journalists carried this skewed outlook to the G-8 conference harping on America’s “low” foreign aid and criticizing...

Consumers are confident that the economy is doing well, better than any time in three years, but ABC and NBC didn’t think enough of that June 28, 2005, news to even report it. For ABC, this is part of an ongoing trend of focusing on negative economic news. In the three years covered by the latest consumer confidence report, ABC has covered negative numbers twice as often as positive. ABC had no trouble detailing the downside of the economic outlook with a lengthy list of adjectives, describing consumer confidence as: “waning,” “falling,” “taken a hit,” “dropping,” “spiraling down,” “way down,”...

In the race for emissions regulation, journalists are in the lead. CNN and USA Today have already declared the global warming debate over, and they’re not alone. Media coverage leading up to the G-8 Summit, beginning July 6, has been based on the assumptions that human-caused global warming is occurring and it must be curbed. The Group of Eight major economic powers meets annually to discuss global issues and map out plans for the year. The United Kingdom took the rotating presidency of the G8 in January 2005, and Prime Minister Tony Blair has said Africa and climate change are...

Claims public ‘doesn’t support private accounts,’ but facts show otherwise. Even as President Bush endorsed a new Social Security plan that didn’t focus on personal accounts, poor coverage of the reform issue continued. This time, it was CNN’s Ed Henry claiming that people don’t support personal accounts even though that isn’t the case. According to Henry, on the June 21, 2005, “Inside Politics,” “We see polls across the board saying that the public by and large doesn’t support private accounts.” Henry didn’t cite any of the polls showing this overwhelming opposition. Henry didn’t even bother to quote from the skewed...

Media harp on PBS political controversy but ignore massive government funding of public broadcasting. PBS advocate Bill Moyers is against subsidies – when they go to the wrong people. But the public broadcasting that airs the show he once hosted rides a $7 billion-plus wave of government funding – a fact that media outlets have omitted in recent coverage of budget wrangling. “Favored corporations get their contracts, subsidies and offshore loopholes,” Moyers said in a political rant on “Now,” a weekly newsmagazine, on March 26, 2004. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), has been...

Free market defenders fight for ‘ownership,’ while reform opponents want to increase ‘biggest government program ever.’by Dan Gainor June 16, 2005 NEW YORK – For an issue that many in the media are calling dead, the June 14, 2005, Social Security debate at City University of New York was quite lively. Supporters of reform warned of a situation ready to “implode” and called for ownership while opponents defended Social Security as the “most successful program in the nation’s history.” The event brought together leading supporters and opponents of reform to discuss what Pat Toomey called “the biggest government program in...

Morgan Spurlock shows how difficult it is to pretend to be poor.by Dan Gainor June 16, 2005 The new Morgan Spurlock documentary ’30 Days’ highlighted the fantasy of “reality” TV as Spurlock and his fiancé pretended to live life on minimum wage surrounded by cameras. Instead of teaching important lessons about saving, personal responsibility and the value of education, Spurlock relied on emotion to try to convince viewers the minimum was too low. The June 15, 2005, program tried to duplicate the success of Spurlock’s Oscar-nominated attack on McDonald’s “Super Size Me,” where he stopped exercising and ate 5,000 calories...

Energy apocalypse is one big worst-case scenario“It probably will be viewed as the worst disaster on American soil, ever.” No, that’s not a review of the new FX Networks movie, “Oil Storm,” though it could be. Instead, it’s a comment from one of the characters in the film about the seemingly endless stream of worst-case scenarios the film ties together to create an energy cataclysm in 2005 and 2006. The movie had its initial airing Sunday, June 5, 2005, in back-to-back broadcasts. The film was designed as a mock-umentary, looking back on the series of catastrophes that piled on top...

‘World News Tonight’ weighs in on the side of the Centers for Disease Control about obesity.by Dan Gainor June 3, 2005 The heavy debate over the recent lower estimates of deaths caused by obesity continued in the media following a press conference by the Centers for Disease Control. ABC’s ‘World News Tonight’ undermined CDC critics in its June 2, 2005 story. Anchor Elizabeth Vargas opened by stating the government position as fact: “Being overweight is extremely bad for your health no matter what the new numbers say.” Both sides of the obesity debate have focused heavily on a new study...

Gasoline prices actually fell during the week leading up to Memorial Day, but broadcasters reminded drivers of ‘record highs.’Memorial Day weekend brought the usual slew of news reports about driving, and network reporters seemed stumped that drivers would keep driving despite the price of gas. What they didn’t point out was that gas prices actually declined going into the holiday weekend. Rewind to April 10, 2005, when CBS’s Trish Regan made a dire prediction on the “Evening News”: that the “national average on a gallon of gas expected to hit $2.50 a gallon by Memorial Day.” That prediction wasn’t attributed...

Three major newspapers attack traditional economic views and show support for the welfare state. by Dan Gainor Readers of three of the most popular newspapers in the U.S. have been deluged with one-sided versions of life in these United States. In four days, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and New York Times all had large articles detailing the disparities between rich and poor. In more than 16,000 words, the three papers painted a picture of what the Post called an “unraveling safety net” that threatens the “New Deal vision of cradle-to-grave security.” What the Post didn’t mention was that...

Report criticizes National Sleep Foundation for drug industry financing, but ignores backing for Public Citizen, as well as its own advertisements. by Dan Gainor March 30, 2005 CBC Evening News employed an obvious double standard in its coverage of a new study indicating Americans aren’t getting enough sleep. Rather than simply focus on the study, reporter Sharyl Attkisson attacked the group that did the research because it gets funding from the sleep industry. According to Attkisson, the issue was “Whether America's sleepiness is a real epidemic or just a pipe dream of the drug industry.” She relied on comments from...

by Amy Menefee March 25, 2005 A flurry of media coverage beginning on March 18 put Galveston, Texas, back into the Social Security spotlight. It’s one of three Texas counties that have gained attention because they opted out of Social Security in the early 1980s, when it was still legal to do so. The New York Times, The Washington Post and ABC News warned Americans last week that the counties’ pension alternative to Social Security was a telling “laboratory” for testing President George W. Bush’s reform plan. According to these news sources, the Galveston plan produced “controversial” results that cast...

News flash from ABC: Cookies are not health food, anonymous sources say. Peter Jennings said on March 18’s “World News Tonight” that “someone” made a connection between Girl Scout cookie sales and obesity. “Someone raised an issue we hadn’t thought of before,” Jennings said. Acting on this news tip, “we asked our medical correspondent, John McKenzie, for his take on this,” he said. What followed was a series of interviews titled “Cookie Controversy” with anti-junk-food spokespeople and a doctor saying that cookies are unhealthy, leading to the conclusion that the Girl Scouts of the USA really are not very nice...

OK, I don't love the first-person shooter games like "Grand Theft Auto," but I've played them enough to know they don't make me into a killer either. Check out the hack job "60 Minutes" did on the game. First, video games were linked to childhood obesity because teens sat around playing the games instead of exercising. Now, CBS’s “60 Minutes” is linking them to something far more destructive – murder – while ignoring obvious points that make the claim look ridiculous. The Sunday, March 6, 2005, broadcast of CBS’s news magazine showed Co-editor Ed Bradley reporting on a lawsuit about...

For several years, the news media have been warning us of the impending doom of global warming. Well, they almost got it right. Forget their reports that blame everything from hot weather to cold weather on global warming. The impending doom lurking just around the corner is the Kyoto Protocol -- and Russia's decision to go along with this nonsense will make it a reality for a good bit of the globe. The U.S. is already under pressure to join in despite the potential price tag of more than $400 billion each year. The treaty gives industrialized nations just eight...