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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Obama

1. September 7, 2011 02:52 PM

   American Banker Shows DOJ Sat On a Bank-Kickback Scandal

   HUD says big banks got $6 billion, but the attorney general does nothing

   By Ryan Chittum

   American Banker has really been doing some superb stuff lately. Jeff Horwitz has a big scoop in today's paper, reporting on a HUD investigation that says banks forced mortgage insurers to pay them $6 billion in kickbacks over ten years. HUD's inspector general tied a bow on the case and presented it to Obama's Department of Justice, which has sat...

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2. January 24, 2011 12:01 PM

   New York’s Obama WH Profile Juicy and Lite

   Heilemann on the Obama redux

   By Joel Meares

   John Heilemann has the cover of New York this week—out today with a picture of the president on the front, phone pressed against his left ear, hands in pockets, eyes downcast to the cover line, “The Remaking of the President.” Inside, the article comes under something a little jazzier: “The West Wing, Season II.” Obama’s poll numbers are up, his...

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3. August 21, 2012 11:00 AM

   Newsweek’s Niall Ferguson debacle

   A misleading cover story gets the wrong kind of buzz for Tina Brown's mag

   By Ryan Chittum

   It's been a long time since I've seen a cover story so comprehensively demolished as Newsweek's disengenuous anti-Obama piece by Harvard's Niall Ferguson, who puts together a greatest-hits compilation of the right's economic smears of the past three-plus years. As I write this, Niall Ferguson's Newsweek cover piece on why Obama's presidency has failed has racked up 13,351 comments, 6,130...

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4. March 25, 2011 02:14 PM

   NYT Is Superb On General Electric’s Tax Avoidance

   Plus, David Kocieniewski continues his Charlie Rangel exposés

   By Ryan Chittum

   (UPDATE: See my follow-up post on GE's poor PR response to the Times's story) The New York Times unloads a fantastic piece of reporting on General Electric and taxes this morning. It's an ugly portrait of GE and the political system it's helped create. David Kocieniewski zeroes in on GE's tax avoidance, which is a proud corporate strategy at Obama...

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5. August 23, 2012 11:00 AM

   The New Yorker on Obama as fundraiser (UPDATED)

   Fascinating reporting but an overly sympathetic portrayal

   By Ryan Chittum

   It's hard to read Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece on campaign fundraising without thinking about how embarrassing and corrupting it is that our system expects the president of the United States to suck up to big shots so he can buy 30-second TV ads on NCIS. “There’s been no thanks for anyone!” the major Democratic donor says. He adds that...

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6. January 25, 2011 06:22 PM

   A Note on the State of the Union

   Let's go beyond the theater

   By Joel Meares

   If you hadn’t already dismissed the State of the Union address as a kind of political Oscars—a room full of rich folk clapping at announcements they already knew were coming—then the lead-up to this year’s address would surely have you convinced. Perhaps no coincidence that the Oscar noms came on the same day. Firstly, we already know much of the...

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7. June 15, 2012 03:00 PM

   Adrift in a sea of (no) coverage

   For two years, little in the news about battle over National Ocean Policy

   By Curtis Brainard

   Last October, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar called on the press to pay more attention to the Obama administration’s achievements in environmental conservation. In response, The Miami Herald’s Carl Hiaasen suggested that the government give journalists more to write about, and he had a point. On Sunday, The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin had a revealing article (which should’ve gotten...

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8. October 11, 2012 06:50 AM

   Ask Obama This: What about housing?

   What went wrong with the administration's mortgage policies

   By Ryan Chittum

   Over the final month of the campaign, CJR will run a series of posts under the headline “Ask Obama This” and “Ask Romney This,” suggesting questions that reporters should pose to the presidential candidates. So far we've asked President Obama about his jobs plan, and Governor Romney about foreign policy. This installment asks President Obama about his housing policies. When...

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9. October 26, 2012 06:51 AM

   Ask Obama This: Will we have to be older to get Medicare?

   We know about Romney’s vouchers, but the president is quiet on the subject of raising eligibility

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Over the final days of the campaign, CJR is running a series of pieces under the headline “Ask Obama This” and “Ask Romney This,” suggesting themes and questions that reporters and pundits can put to the presidential candidates. So far we’ve asked President Obama about his short term jobs plan and about housing, and Africa, among other things, and asked...

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10. March 2, 2011 07:47 PM

    Audit Notes: Criminal Query, Ritholtz on McKinsey; Obama’s Jobs Panel

    By Ryan Chittum

    — The Financial Times reports that the SEC is investigating whether Las Vegas Sands bribed foreign officials. The headline: Sands China shares hit by SEC probe of parent But down in the fifth paragraph we learn that the Justice Department is also investigating Las Vegas Sands. The DOJ prosecutes criminal cases, while the SEC prosecutes (or more like: settles) civil...

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11. March 7, 2012 01:29 AM

    Audit Notes: Fox on Energy, Journalists and Programmers, Bloomberg

    By Ryan Chittum

    Media Matters has an amusing compilation of Fox News reactions to $4 a gallon gasoline in 2008, when George W. Bush was in office, and its reactions today, when Barack Obama is. 2008: 2012: Back then, gas prices were based on global supply and demand issues at Fox, but now you'd think Obama single-handedly fixes prices. It's incredibly dishonest to...

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12. November 24, 2010 12:33 AM

    Audit Notes: Hypocrisy on Warren, Just… Why?, Congress’ Net Worth Soars

    By Ryan Chittum

    Former Timesman Peter S. Goodman is out of the gates fast over at The Huffington Post. He points out the hypocrisy of Republicans calling for investigations of Elizabeth Warren and her setting up of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Supposedly she's not being "transparent" enough. The gall! Compare that to, say, Dick Cheney's doings, Goodman says: Recently enough that you...

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13. November 16, 2010 08:02 PM

    Audit Notes: ProPub vs. BofA, Wall Street in the White House, Short-Armed

    By Ryan Chittum

    I love to see the press just flat-out say somebody's full of it. ProPublica's Karen Weise does that today, calling out a Bank of America executive for testifying before Congress that it can't modify more mortgages because investors won't let it (it's worth noting that The New York Times this morning parroted the BofA line): Desoer’s testimony echoes what homeowners...

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14. September 9, 2011 08:45 PM

    Audit Notes: The 14th Century, Gilded China, The Second Stimulus

    By Ryan Chittum

    Treasury bonds yields hit another low today, dropping to 1.917 percent for ten-year bonds. You might even say markets are begging the government to borrow money to stimulate the economy. The folks who've been warning us about near-term deficits for the last few years have been screaming about bond vigilantes and inflation, and they've been all wrong. The Wall Street...

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15. February 16, 2012 12:52 AM

    Audit Notes: TP Bubble, No More “Fat Cats,” Big Long Now

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Wall Street Journal takes a look at one growing American industry the Internet and the Chinese can't wipe out: Toilet paper. Turns out that "unlike other paper, tissue paper isn't economical to ship from overseas because of its bulk." Newspapers on the other hand: But between 2001 and 2011, U.S. annual consumption of daily-newspaper newsprint plunged 61% to 3.6...

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16. November 16, 2012 11:00 AM

    Climate roller coaster back on track

    With Obama talking global warming, media see ups and downs

    By Curtis Brainard

    At his first post-election press conference on Wednesday, President Obama talked about his current position on climate change in greater detail than he’s done in two years. News outlets’ attempts to interpret the meaning of his remarks produced bewilderingly disparate takes, however, whether that involved Obama’s personal commitment to addressing the issue: “Obama vows to take personal charge of climate...

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17. November 15, 2011 04:59 PM

    Confused NYT Coverage of Obama Health Care Law’s Prospects

    By Ryan Chittum

    The New York Times can't make up its mind on what a Supreme Court ruling against Obama health care plan's individual mandate would mean for the overall health-care law. On page one today, it reports this: Whatever Court Rules, Major Changes in Health Care Likely to Last On the website today, a news analysis , presumably going in tomorrow's paper,...

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18. March 9, 2011 05:08 PM

    Corporate Cousins

    A walk down memory lane with the Murdoch media

    By Ryan Chittum

    Daniel Gross brings up the fact that it's been two years since Michael Boskin's editorial in The Wall Street Journal claimed "Obama's Radicalism Is Killing the Dow," and that since that piece ran, stocks have soared. But Boskin was hardly alone. So it's worth revisiting how frequently that same line ran in Rupert Murdoch's media outlets over a two-week span...

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19. January 7, 2011 11:43 AM

    Daley Latest in a Long Line of Business-Friendly Obama Picks

    A "conciliatory" move in an administration that's seen plenty of them

    By Ryan Chittum

    The press is calling President Obama's appointment of JPMorgan Chase's William Daley as his new chief of staff a conciliatory move toward business, a step toward "peace with business"—a "truce." And so it is, I suppose. But what was it when Obama picked Tim Geithner, the Wall Street banks pick as president of the New York Fed, back in November...

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20. January 27, 2011 02:32 PM

    Debt and Weed

    The president faces a YouTube nation

    By Joel Meares

    At 2.30 p.m. (EST) President Obama will appear on YouTube answering questions submitted by the website’s users. With questions now closed, the “Your Interview with the President” YouTube page is showing that 193,077 people submitted 139,602 questions. I rummaged through some of the questions to pick out highlights and spotlight some budding journos with a knack for asking the...

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