With the president's upcoming State of the Union address on Jan. 31, the economy will come under fresh scrutiny, so it is essential to separate the facts from the media spin.

All in all, we're very well aligned with what the president laid out in his State of the Union address the other night.

A key component of President Bush's claim in his State of the Union address last January that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program -- its alleged attempt to buy uranium in Niger -- was disputed by a CIA-directed mission to the central African nation in early 2002, according to senior administration officials and a former government official.

As energy prices have spiked and world demand increased, the United States' reliance on oil controlled by Venezuela's anti-American despot Hugo Chavez has become a real danger. But it's a danger the networks barely even mention.

More than 4.6 million jobs have been added since May 2003 -- 31 straight months of positive job growth. Unemployment dropped down to 4.9 percent, lower than the average of all three recent decades.

While broadcast reporters worried about dangers of foreign firms running American ports, they paid no attention to Chavez and his latest threats to cut off oil to the United States.