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The only thing CNN contributor Andy Serwer was missing for a recent business update was appearing on air in a leisure suit. The Fortune magazine editor raised concerns of 1970s, disco-era “stagflation” in a June 15 “Minding Your Business” segment on “American Morning.” Stagflation, Serwer correctly defined, is stagnant economic growth coupled with inflation. Inflation at an annual rate of 3.8 percent, “the highest rate in…
Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) has become a convenient morning stop on many hectic commutes. Recent studies have even pointed to coffee’s potential in helping to prevent cirrhosis of the liver. But on ABC, the coffee maker was criticized during a “consumer alert” that treated cups of coffee like a “dose” of a hard drug.
The June 19 edition of “Good Morning America” presented Starbucks as akin to a narcotics dealer…
The U.S. Postal Service is helping cigarette bootleggers evade the law, warned the June 18 “World News Tonight.” But while ABC’s Dan Harris explored the legal quandary the postal office faces in preventing tax evasion from Internet sales of tobacco, he left out a key reason for the strong black market in cigarettes: high state tobacco taxes.
“New York’s…
CNN gave viewers a sort of Saturday morning fever as CNN’s Andy Serwer raised fears of stagflation sapping the economy’s strength on the June 17 “In the Money.” “Stagflation” is a term coined in the 1970s to refer to high inflation coupled with a weak economy.
Two days earlier, Serwer suggested on CNN’s June 15 “American Morning” that the economy was already in such a state. Inflation at an annual rate of 3.8 percent, “the highest rate in…
The three broadcast networks have focused growing attention on inflation recently – 42 stories since early May. CBS anchor Bob Schieffer declared on June 14 “Well, it is back, inflation, that is.” The following day, ABC’s Bill Ritter cautioned, “everything from mowing the lawn to joining a gym could cost you more money.” Yet, when positive inflation news was announced just hours later by the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, ABC didn’t even…
In the mid-1990s, aside from tobacco companies, Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT) and its CEO Bill Gates were perhaps the media’s favorite corporate villain. Now he’s a media darling. On the March 3, 1998, then CBS “Evening News,” anchor Dan Rather suggested Microsoft needed to be reined in by the federal government. “Some policing may be needed along the information superhighway,” he said, adding that “fellow-travelers say Gates is trying to run them off…
“We are the problem,” declared NBC’s “Today” co-anchor Matt Lauer doing a stint as host for the SciFi network. Lauer was referring to mankind’s alleged misuse of planet Earth, but his comment better suits the media and his apocalyptic documentary. Lauer’s program, “Countdown to Doomsday,” merged nearly every science-fiction disaster flick ever made – “The Terminator,” “Deep Impact,” “I, Robot” and, of course, the SciFi Channel’s own “…
ABC’s Charlie Gibson promised his June 13 “World News Tonight” viewers a look at “why a leading consumer group has a bone to pick over the fat in KFC food.” But that organization was none other than the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an anti-food industry group that has had a beef with everything from movie theater popcorn to soda pop. “The Center for Science in the Public Interest is taking KFC to court over the trans fat used to…
The June 9 “Now with David Brancaccio” could well have been titled PBS’s “Tin-Foil Conspiracy Theatre” as the newsmagazine looked at death of the electric car from the Michael Moore-like lens of a left-wing filmmaker. Rather than entertaining the notion that a lack of market demand doomed the vehicles, “Now” instead pushed filmmaker Chris Paine’s arguments that the “clean” car’s demise was the result of a sinister plot by GM and Big Oil. That…
Perhaps not since “Gigli” has a movie so highly anticipated by the media done so little at the box office. Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” has been and still is being strongly promoted in the media, but as with the ill-fated Lopez-Affleck outing, the moviegoers aren’t busting down theater doors to see it. Despite lengthy interviews on “The Early Show” and “Today” or a coveted interview slot on late night talk shows like…