The 2024 Legal Defense Fundraiser has ended early due to the Board's decision to settle the suit. Donations will go towards the creation of a legal defense fund. Discussion on the matter can be found at the RationalMedia Foundation noticeboard. Thank you for your generous support.
Investor's Business Daily
You gotta spin it to win it Media |
![]() |
Stop the presses! |
We want pictures of Spider-Man! |
Extra! Extra! |
Investor's Business Daily (IBD) is an American "newspaper" (with associated website) that (obviously) covers mostly financial, business, and investment news. Its op-eds are chock-full of Ben Steinery along with numerous denialist hit pieces, astroturf, and mouthing off by bottom-of-the-barrel wingnuts (e.g., Brent Bozell) in a way that makes the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal look like the Daily Worker.
Their editorial cartoons can get very nutty,[1] and their anti-environmentalism can reach astounding heights.[note 1] At times, they venture into full-on, balls-out conspiracy theory territory when it comes to global warming, including accusing NASA and NOAA of conspiring to manipulate data[2] and fabricated the now popular denialist talking point that James Hansen is a shill for George Soros.[3] (Oh, can't forget Climategate, of course, they were all over that.) This is even less surprising when you notice that they let lobbyists and PR reps for denialist think tanks like the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute and experts for hire like Michael Fumento pen their bullshit all over IBD's pages. There's the other usual anti-environmental nonsense as well, including DDT denial and second-hand smoke denial.
IBD's most infamous op-ed was one that, in trying to make an argument against Obamacare, claimed Stephen Hawking would have been euthanized by the NHS if he lived in Britain. Hawking then replied that he credits the NHS with saving his life. In true IBD fashion, they then issued a "correction" noting that the "implication" in the column that Hawking was not a citizen of the UK had been "fixed."[4] They still post less than-accurate-information on Obamacare to this day.
On personal finance matters, IBD promotes investing using CAN SLIM, a pseudoscientific technical analysis of stocks developed by IBD founder William J. O'Neil. One of the claims frequently found in IBD is that a price graph in a "cup and handle" shape indicates an ideal time to buy a stock.
External links
- IBD
- Deltoid: Lehrer and Lott recycle, Lehrer goes solo, Don't trust anything you read in IBD, The Exxon-funded swiftboating of James Hansen, To Rasool
- Scientist busts biz sheet for misrepresenting his work, DeSmog Blog
- IBD falsely claimed that "the earth hasn't been warming at all, at least not in the last decade", Newscorp Watch
- A man got shot to death and the killer is free! Yaaay!
Notes
- ↑ For example, did you know environmentalists are to blame for the Exxon-Valdez and Gulf spills?
References
- ↑ Obama Akbar!, Media Matters (Heh, fiscal cliff.)
- ↑ Right-wing media forward conspiracy theory that NASA, NOAA manipulate climate data, Media Matters
- ↑ Investors Business Daily has as much as 100 lies on every page, archived from the original by Deltoid
- ↑ Hawking serves crow to Investor's Business Daily, Ed Brayton