Categories: OLD Media Moves

Critic: AP emphasizes negativity in housing reports

Tom Blumer writes on the NewsBusters site that the Associated Press seems to always accentuate the negative in the National Association of RealtorsÂ report on the housing market.

Blumer wrote, “Granted, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) is a trade organization which will, as trade organizations do, try to put the best face on a bad situation. And granted, part of the press’s job is to filter through hype and false sunniness to report the truth of what’s really going on.

“But that is most emphatically not what the Associated Press did with yesterday’s NAR report on the state of the national housing market.

“Instead, AP failed to report overall statistics in favor of reporting individual metro areas; ignored most of the legitimately good news; ignored an important piece of historical context; and, most importantly, and as has been the case for well over a year in the national business press, emphasized reductions in unit sales while de-emphasizing much smaller reductions in sale prices.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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tw says:
February 16, 2008 at 4:29 pm
I'm puzzled why you are linking to this right-wing criticism by an accountant. The guy complains whenever a news report on the economy is gloomy (perhaps because he thinks it reflects poorly on the Republican in the White House.)