Latest Blogs

Scott Hogenson | January 24, 2005
     Some funny things can happen when political activism mixes with corporate operations. Corporations and their officers routinely contribute to Republican and Democratic political campaigns and causes, but…
Dan Gainor | January 7, 2005
     The holidays are over and millions have resolved to lose the weight we just gained. As we head into the new year, the major media will make you think twice about the whole concept of holiday stuffing. How…
Dan Gainor | December 13, 2004

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Diet and obesity continue to weigh heavily on the minds of Americans. Those concerns have carried over to the news media, but the coverage takes on a strong anti-business slant, as if businesses and advertisers were…

Dan Gainor | December 13, 2004

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Obesity has become one of the most commonplace health issues covered by the mainstream media. This summer, networks and newspapers were full of stories on fad diets, recipes and overweight adults trying to lose…

Dan Gainor | November 8, 2004

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For nearly four years, network news programs have presented a skewed view of global warming and the Kyoto treaty that liberal environmentalists claim would cure it. Those same newscasts have all-but ignored the…

Dan Gainor | November 8, 2004

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Deadly droughts, polar caps melting, forest fires, sweltering heat. Global warming hasn’t hit the news every day, but when it has, it has done so with a bang. Network news programs have parroted almost any claim to…

Dan Gainor | October 14, 2004

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The media gave President Bush consistently negative press about perceived poor job creation and unemployment in the summer of 2004 but their reports were overwhelmingly positive when President Clinton ran for reelection in…

Dan Gainor | October 14, 2004

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The media have hammered President George W. Bush on the employment issue despite 13 straight months of positive job creation and other good economic news. The October 8, 2004 jobs report was the latest evidence that…

| October 14, 2004

An Economists View Reporting Labor Statistics Correctly

Gary Wolfram, Ph.D. The George Munson Professor…

Dan Gainor | September 23, 2004
     The food police are looking to take a healthy bite out of corporate America. What is their beef? They think the food industry is making all of us fat. Are they recommending we eat less or hit the gym? Not…
Dan Gainor | August 20, 2004
     Former New England Journal of Medicine Editor Marcia Angell is promoting her new book attacking the pharmaceutical industry and urging added government regulations at the same time. She is already hitting the media circuit as hard as she hits…
Paul F. Stifflemire, Jr. | June 29, 2004
     Close on the heels of the TIME/ABC News Obesity Summit in Colonial Williamsburg, new research may have discovered the possibility that the increase in the numbers of obese Americans could correlate closely…
Dan Gainor | June 2, 2004

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More and more Americans are obsessed with their weight, and the news media have responded with an abundance of stories about food and fat. But there’s more to the fat story than just giving the public more news they can use…

Dan Gainor | June 2, 2004

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It’s hard to turn on a television set and not be bombarded with news about fat — a new warning about the dangers of obesity, a new diet that lets you eat more while the pounds melt away, or the unveiling of a new…

Paul F. Stifflemire, Jr. | February 11, 2004
     Journalists are usually quite reserved about using the military as arbiters of scientific credibility. One may recall, for example, the outraged skepticism expressed over the Pentagons plans to study the…
Paul F. Stifflemire, Jr. | January 22, 2004
Two studies, one suggesting that 30 percent of US children surveyed reported eating fast food on at least one of the two days they were studied, the other claiming that our teenagers believe they are the…
Paul F. Stifflemire, Jr. | January 20, 2004
     Claims that global warming will cause mass extinction by 2050 were received with uniformly sympathetic coverage by media outlets. Newspapers in Britain, Canada and the United States featured stories…
Paul F. Stifflemire, Jr. | December 15, 2003
On Monday December 8 ABC offered a Primetime Special: Whos to Blame? Obesity in America: How to Get Fat Without Really Trying. Peter Jennings advanced the notion that assigning personal responsibility is the…
Paul F. Stifflemire, Jr. | December 5, 2003
Having already issued such gems as the following, we have to wonder why ABC is risking its glass house Monday night, December 8, palavering about how the obesity epidemic in the United States is the fault of…
Paul F. Stifflemire, Jr. | December 1, 2003
ABCs Meredith Vieiras offered viewers a look into the causes and costs of obesity without devolving into an indictment of those who produce and distribute food products in America. Instead, she took her…