A Record Obsession
Topic: Media Research Center
With the current jump in oil and gas prices, the Media Research Center has renewed its insistence that the prices are not records:

-- An April 20 CyberAlert item by Brent Baker claimed that "the broadcast networks have been falsely trumpeting nominal oil prices as a 'record high.'"

-- An April 22 NewsBusters post by Brent Baker claimed that "Friday night the three broadcast network evening newscasts again hyperventilated over the 'record' high price for a barrel of oil, though adjusted for inflation, the only competent way to measure any price over time, current $75 per barrel oil is $12 short of the real record high set in January of 1981."

As we've previously noted, the MRC has not been similarly interested in correcting those conservatives who called a Democrat-sponsored 1993 increase the largest in history when, adjusted for inflation, a Reagan-era tax increase was the largest.