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The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
Strong U.S. economy; ABC weighed and
found lacking on calorie-counting; IBD joins other media in snowing
public on housing news.
Jan. 4, 2005
Investor’s
Business Daily (IBD) wins both The Good and The Ugly for separate
stories on its front page, while “Good Morning America’s”
super-sized math mistake in its plug for a weight loss challenge
garners it the first Bad award of 2006.
The Good
The January 3
Investor’s Business Daily ranked the resilient U.S. economy’s
strength as the No. 3 story of 2005. Putting everything into
perspective, IBD accomplished in a few paragraphs a mature
perspective on the economy other media missed throughout the entire
year.
“If you told
economists three years ago that in 2005 the U.S. would be immersed
in a global war on terror, experience record highs in oil prices and
finish the year with a 13th straight interest rate hike by the
Federal Reserve, you might have been asked: And what month did the
recession begin,” noted the editors.
The daily
business publication went on to give credit in part to the Bush tax
cuts: “President Bush's three tax cuts — culminating in 2003’s
broad-based cuts in taxes on income, capital gains and savings —
deserve much of the credit. Since those tax cuts went into effect
nine quarters ago, the U.S. economy has grown on average at a 4.5%
annual rate. In the nine quarters before the tax cuts, the average
was 1.1%.”
The Bad
Mix a drive-through approach to TV journalism with
gimmicky marketing and you get the 2006 fitness kick for “Good
Morning America”: getting Americans to lose 50 million pounds in one
year. But in their rush to feel the burn, ABC’s weight watchers
underestimated the number of cheeseburgers they want Americans to
give up. The
Business & Media Institute reported on December 27 how “ABC went for
thin math and came up with a hefty mistake” by assuming that.
The Ugly
Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) joined other outlets such as the
AP and Bloomberg in blowing hot air on the so-called “housing
bubble.” A front page story on December 27 addressed a drop in
month-to-month home sales in November. While IBD hyped the monthly
drop as a sign of a possibly cooling housing market, it ignored that
October had seen a very strong month-to-month increase in sales and
that home sales in November 2005 were up strongly from the same time
in 2004. In an otherwise negative piece on the housing market, The
Washington Post’s Kirstin Downey noted in her December 24 article
that even with the lower November sales numbers that “about 1.25
million new single-family homes will be sold in 2005, up from the
record-breaking 1.2 million sold in 2004.”
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly tracks the best and worst media
coverage of business and economics. Readers are invited to submit
suggestions or news tips to staff writer Ken Shepherd at
kshepherd@mediaresearch.org.
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