Follow this link to The New York Times column by Russ Douthat (can that be his real name? Does it sound like doubt that?).

He analyzes the reasons for CNN’s falling ratings, claiming that in trying to have disinterested anchors present unbiased news, they are losing their audience. He thinks that Wolf Blitzer falls into the disinterested anchor category.  Maybe Wolf is disinterested, but I also think he is none too sharp.

I can’t decide if I quite buy his suggestions for real discussions between opposing points of view. Perhaps he is on to something.  What do you think?

He mentions William F. Buckley, Gore Vidal, and Norman Mailer as examples of what might work.  He also mentions Jon Stewart as a good example.  He failed to mention Charlie Rose.

I might agree on William F. Buckley if you restrict the example to his early years.  At the end, William F. Buckley was no better than some of the people that Douthat decries.

I wonder if some good investigative journalism might give a boost to CNN?  I don’t fancy the kind of gotcha stories that 60 Minutes, Dateline, or Geraldo Rivera focus on. Perhaps a better example would be the kind that Bill Moyers does.

What I want to see on the news are anchors and reporters who are smarter than I am.  I don’t get what I want from reporters who don’t think to ask the obvious questions.  The ones who merely give you the “he says and she says”, or ask inane questions instead of meaty ones just don’t cut it with me.

What especially irks me are reporters who either pretend to be or are just some dumb regular person. Sometimes they like to act humble and claim they are incapable of understanding what they are reporting on.

I don’t need a reporter to tell me a subject is so complicated that the reporter can’t understand it.  If that is true, get someone who does understand to report on it.  If the reporter is bored by the repetition of a long political campaign, get someone who isn’t bored and boring.

The recent news that Caterpillar is taking a $100million dollar charge and AT&T is taking a $1billion charge because of changes in health care does not pertain to the current health care bill, as I understand it. This has to do with the Drug Insurance plan passed under George Bush.

Under that plan, subsidies and tax advantages were introduced to prevent companies like Caterpillar and AT&T from dropping their drug coverage. Those subsidies and tax write-offs are expiring, hence the accounting charges.

The accounting charges are just changes in the way companies have to account for future liabilities. There is no cash involved in the write-downs.

These are one time charges that the stock market regularly ignores in evaluating a company’s worth.

$1 billion sure sounds like a lot of money, but it turns out to be only a small part (0.6%) of AT&T’s market capitalization of $155.34billion.

That would lower AT&Ts stock price by $0.17 of its current $26.30 price if the stock market decided not to ignore one time charges like this.

Follow this link to the story in Rolling Stone. The sub-title to the article is How the nation’s biggest banks are ripping off American cities with the same predatory deals that brought down Greece.

This is a good story to read if you believe that local government control is better than any interference from the federal government. (Well, maybe not. It’s not clear what you will think after reading this.)

If you are easily offended by some 4 letter words, then the story is not for you.

In case you opt to skip this incredible story (not April 1st anymore), here is the closing of the article:

And even if the regulators manage to catch up with them billions of dollars later, the banks just pay a small fine and move on to the next scam. This isn’t capitalism. It’s nomadic thievery.

Follow this link the article in the Chicago Tribune that is A look at how the new law will affect four people in different circumstances.

This shows that you can find an occasional story that tells you about the benefits of the health care reform bill instead of focusing only on the costs.

Follow this link to the UPI story that quotes Christina Romer as saying:

Romer said she thinks the United States will experience “a different kind” of economic recovery from this recession.

“I think it’s not going to be one where consumers come roaring back as the engine of growth,” she said. “It’s going to need to come from our exports.

Who could have imagined that? Not Nightly Business Report which is constantly saying that they don’t know where the recovery is going to come from. Maybe you could have read it here or in the Worcester T & G from that renowned economist, Steve Greenberg.

See my previous post, Capitalism Is The Path To Prosperity, where  on January 24, 2010, I said:

… Since the local consumers have finally realized that they cannot count on rising real-estate values as extra income, they are cutting back on purchases to pay off debts. If they won’t provide the purchasing power to stimulate demand, exports are our next best bet.

Follow this link to this startling story.

Now I finally understand why people are upset over the concept of a corporation being treated as if it were a person

Follow this link to the report in the Washington Post about the latest job numbers just released by the US Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I love the way the media can always find some way to emphasize the bad news among the good.

However, only 162,000 new jobs were created on non-farm payrolls, well below what economists were expecting. Most forecasters were expecting about 200,000 new jobs to be created last month, and the shortfall underlines the wobbly nature of this recovery.

Later the article goes on to say:

Forecasters expected a bump of 100,000 census hires in March. But only 48,000 were hired.

So 50,000 fewer census hires were made than expected.  This difference far more than accounts for the shortfall in hiring from what most forecasters were expecting.  In other words, there was much more private hiring and much less government hiring than expected.  Why did the author of the article choose to highlight the negative in the report?

Forecasters expected the rate to remain unchanged at 9.7 percent. On Thursday, the number of new jobless claims filed last week dipped slightly, down 6,000 to 439,000. It’s tough for this economy to start creating a meaningful number of new jobs until the weekly new jobless claims number gets down into the low 400s and stays there.

I guess 439,000 must not be in the low 400s.  What is the low 400s? Would 425 be the low 400s? If this rate of decline were to continue (and not accelerate) it would take only 3 months to reach the low 400s.

Feel free to read the article and see if you can find any more examples.  Do journalists feel that they have to find the negative in any situation so they can maintain their street cred? Would they feel like they were bowing to the man if they just slanted the article to the positive and merely mentioned, in passing,  some of the negatives in the numbers? They seem to focus on the negative and just mention, in passing, some of the possible positive interpretations.

Reporting on the same data, the Reuters article, US STOCKS-Futures rise on stronger March jobs data, said:

U.S. stock index futures rose slightly on Friday after the government said nonfarm payrolls increased by 162,000 in March, pointing to potential gains when stock trading resumes next week.

I guess the stock market was able to see the balance between the good and the bad in the statistics.

Follow this link to the article from the McClatchy newspapers.

I am sure that some of this history will be coming to a talk show or letter to the editor near you. This article gives the counter-argument to the rewritten history.

I don’t purport to vouch for the accuracy of either side of this article, but it does give you a place to start if you need to find authenticated facts about history.

Certain items like the history of the depression and the times when certain things occurred can easily be verified when you have to.

Follow this link if you cannot see the above video.

Follow this link to YouTube if you don’t see the above video