Topic: Media Research Center
In a Dec. 3 Business & Media Institute item and NewsBusters post, Jeff Poor writes that back in October, "the media were jumping on the $100-barrel bandwagon, warning Americans the worst was ahead," adding, " It has been six weeks since that warning. Oil hasn’t hit $100 a barrel, and the retail price of gasoline is a little more than $3 a gallon." But nowhere does Poor note just how close crude oil prices got to $100 a barrel, which would have undermined his attack on the media as scaremongers.
Poor suggests that oil prices never got much above $90 a barrel as he cited news reports from Nov. 6 that predicted $100 a barrel prices. In fact, the day after those reports, light sweet crude peaked during trading at $98.62 a barrel, closing at $98.10. Then, on Nov. 21, light sweet crude peaked again during trading at an all-time high of $99.29 a barrel.
In other words, the prediction of $100 a barrel oil were not unfounded and, in fact, within a buck of being realized. While it's technically true that "oil hasn’t hit $100 a barrel," Poor is being disingenuous by ignoring that the fact it came to within a dollar of $100 and pretending that because it didn't exactly hit that magic number, those record highs are somehow meaningless.
The MRC has exhibited an obsession with oil prices in the past, as we've noted, insisting that prices weren't at a "record high" because they weren't adjusted for inflation. Poor and friends can't use that excuse these days -- prices are officially in record-high territory.
