By Invester's Business Daily

http://ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=279503526320834
(c) 2007 Investor's Business Daily. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

In this exclusive 7-part series, IBD explores the reasons behind the great paradox of a boom now in its sixth year – that despite spectacular gains, most Americans think the economy’s in bad shape and headed for recession.

Media bias has been detected in other studies, but this series raises an additional possibility – media incompetence in analyzing and explaining how the economy and financial markets work.

Installments will cover how the media report on subjects like tax cuts, deficits, trade and stocks, creating myths – and unwarranted fear -- as they go along.

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Part Seven

How Liberal Dems, Major Media Perpetuate A Cycle Of Negativity

Journalism: Last fall, when the jobless rate hit a five-year low of 4.4%, Vice President Cheney was asked by ABC's George Stephanopolous why the administration didn't get more credit for it. "Well," said Cheney, "you guys don't help."

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Part Six

Outsourcing Myths

Journalism: America's companies are shutting down factories and offices, and shipping jobs wholesale overseas. That's how the media have portrayed it. In reality, outsourcing has created more, better-paying jobs here.

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Part Five

Free-Trade Fraud

Journalism: If you laid all the economists in the world end to end, goes an old joke, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion. But there's one thing almost all economists agree on: Free trade is good. Yet the media don't get it.

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Part Four

Deficit Deceptions

Journalism: President Bush has been criticized unmercifully by politicians of all stripes and media of all types for failing to rein in federal spending and letting deficits "soar." But is the criticism fair?

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Part Three

Blind To Reality

Journalism: The Dow had just pierced 13,000, but TV news anchors couldn't fathom why. All the data, they noted, showed the economy doing worse, not better. But therein lies a problem with media market analysis.

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Part Two

The Tax Story Media Invariably Bury

Journalism: One of the assertions that the media make most often about the U.S. economy is that President Bush's tax cuts didn't do what he promised. But the data clearly show nothing could be farther from the truth.

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Part One

A Boom That Falls On Deaf Ears

Journalism: The war in Iraq is a hard slog, and President Bush's domestic agenda has hit another pothole. But if nothing else is going well, he can always take comfort in the spectacular economy his policies have brought about. Or can he?

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