Your World sub host acknowledged FOX's economic spin

Written by Jeremy Cluchey

Published

Filling in for host Neil Cavuto on the August 10 edition of Your World w/ Neil Cavuto, Brenda Buttner (who also hosts FOX News Channel's weekend business show Bulls & Bears), attempted to bolster syndicated columnist and American Enterprise Institute fellow James K. Glassman's attacks on Democrats who “don't want to see the economy do well” and confirmed FOX News Channel's efforts to reinforce the view that “the economy is doing well.” When Glassman asserted that “the economy is doing well, and Americans believe it,” Buttner offered, “Well, it's a story we've been telling here as well.”

From the August 10 edition of FOX News Channel's Your World w/Neil Cavuto:

GLASSMAN: Yeah, it is, but I think, number one, they ought to tell the truth, and number two, I think psychology is important in the economy, and all this bad-mouthing of the economy could actually have a real effect and hurt real families. ... The economy is doing well, but the Democrats don't want to see that happen, so they're badmouthing it.

BUTTNER: So, that's their only ammunition, though, and again this is a political year.

[...]

GLASSMAN: [A]ll they're [Democrats] doing is negativism, pessimism, and that could have an effect on the real economy. ... I believe -- and, look, this is just a guess -- I think the market is somewhat worried about the enhanced possibility over the last few months about a [Senator John] Kerry presidency. ... But look, the economy by any standard is doing well, when we look at the aggregate figures over a decent amount of time. Certainly, one or two indicators, you know, one month to the next, are going to be lagging, but in general the economy is doing well, and Americans believe it. That's much more important.

BUTTNER: Well, it's a story we've been telling here as well.

Glassman, who also hosts the website TechCentralStation.com (described in a Washington Monthly article as a “journo-lobbying” operation published by public affairs firm DCI Group), has regularly criticized Democrats in his columns. In a August 2 column titled "The Trends Are All Towards Republicans," for example, Glassman described Kerry as “shifty and sweaty, jowly and sallow, bobbing and weaving.” In another, titled "The Real Benedict Arnolds," as Media Matters for America has noted, Glassman falsely linked Kerry to the H.J. Heinz Co. and distorted that company's business practices in an attempt to claim that it was hypocritical of Kerry to criticize outsourcing of American jobs overseas.