ECONOMICS: Equal Parts Doom and Gloom
Gainor, Dan
ECONOMICS Dan Gainor Equal Parts Doom and Gloom "-~HE 2006 ELECTION IS A REFERENDUM not just on the President, Iraq, and Republicans, but on the American economy. Polls show a consistently...
...But as the Washington Post conceded-two months after the election: "growth for the second half of [1992] was the strongest in five years...
...While economic reporting is overwhelming negative, a discerning reader can find sprinkles of positive economic news...
...economywas in shambles...
...The three broadcast networks report bad economic news more than twice as often as good news, according to a new study by the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute (BMI) that looked at an entire year of news coverage...
...CNBC's John Harwood followed: "What high gas prices do is obscure the one accomplishment George Bush and Republicans in Congress most would like to brag about, and that's a growing economy...
...The Case for the Economy EPUBLICANS ATTEMPT TO EMPHASIZE the success1 economy but come up empty-handed at every turn...
...Even the Washington Post admits negative news can sway opinion...
...Network reporting uses gas prices to do just that...
...Jim Axelrod of CBS Evening News explained the problem on May 30: "The administration needs a salesman...
...Out of 258 stories that explicitly mentioned the U.S...
...Prices declined more than 25 cents per gallon after their August peak of $3.03...
...58 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2006 DAN GAINOR ABC reporter Kate Snow's July 11 story was a perfect example ofhowthe networks turn good news on its head-in this case, the declining deficit...
...Reporter Sharyn Alfonsi started off CBS's 2006 with that downbeat outlook: "With big business struggling, unsteady interest rates and signs of a recession, the best some forecasters are hoping for in 2006 is an average year...
...In May, it used the appointment of new Treasury secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Harry Paulson as leverage...
...Polls show voters focused on domestic issues and close to one-third of respondents cite economic issues such as gas prices or taxation as their top concerns...
...It failed...
...Polls show a consistently low approval rating for Bush's economic perform...
...The New York Times also reported a "surge in wage-and-salary income in the first half of this year...
...As another election approaches, the economy is again near the top of the list for voters...
...He called it "good news for Bush" that "the economy looks uncannily like it did in the summer of 1996," citing several variablesunemployment rate, inflation, and consumer confidence-as similar for both incumbents...
...Instead of celebrating how the country weathered last fall's storms, the BMI study reveals that ABC, CBS, and NBC spent the period from August 1, 2005, to July 31, 2006, making the case that we are at risk of sending the economy into recession...
...Dan Gainor is the Boone th'ckens Free Market Fellow at the Media Research Center and director of its Business & Media Institute...
...Despite good economic numbers, there are usually network assertions that the Bush economy has left behind ordinaryworkers...
...But, average Americans are having increasing trouble living within their means," she said, undermining the good news...
...And many of these viewers also vote...
...a "housing bubble" threatening the American dream...
...Good economic news was relegated to brief items...
...Yet the economy they warn might lead to recession and widespread foreclosures continues to thrive...
...Economist Larry Kudlow put things in perspective in a July column, in which he noted that the economy grew 20 percent in the eleven quarters following Bush's June 2003 tax cuts...
...Business Week Chief Economist Michael J. Mandel said the September 2004 economy was similar to the one Clinton enjoyed before re-election in 1996...
...Stories about jobs during Clinton's re-election campaign were positive more than six times as often as theywere for Bush, according to a previous BMI report...
...Turn on the news and you'll see hurricane victims torn from their jobs...
...But the media's treatment was far different...
...High gas prices constantly suggest an economy in chaos...
...Between the fourth quarter of last year and the second quarter of 2006, pay grew at an annual pace around 7 percent after adjusting for inflation, up from an earlier estimate of 4 percent...
...Some oil experts even predict a larger decrease...
...Only 29 percent of the group that saw a positive story on job creation answered that way...
...CBSEvening News came out especially slanted...
...The August 31 article showed the depth of the good news for ordinary workers...
...The slogan "It's the economy, stupid" helped launch Bill Clinton into the West Wing in 1992 because the media widely reported the U.S...
...After months of public dissatisfaction with Bush's economic performance, the President's team went on the assault in April...
...ance--a number that dropped as low as 28 percent in a MayNew York Times/CBS poll...
...In addition, the media are losing gas prices as an issue...
...Bad news--rising mortgage rates, auto industry layoffs, and even hurricanes-was the focus of 81 percent of its full-length stories...
...A front-page piece in the August 30 USA Today cited gasoline analyst Fred Rozell predicting gas prices will "be closer to $2 than $3 come Thanksgiving...
...T HE MEDIA DRUMBEAT of negative economic news may well turn into a funeral march for Republicans come November...
...And that is after only one story...
...Second-quarter growth was revised upward to 2.9 percent, defying dark predictions...
...That drop is expected to help low-wage earners significantly...
...The news media don't let us forget it, showing videos of rising prices from California to New York...
...In the past year, network newscasts have been packed with images of an economy on the ropes like some exhausted boxer one punch away from hitting the canvas...
...Three years of positive employment growth have produced nearly 6 million new jobs...
...That's the backdrop for much of the coverage...
...The Case Against the Media L AST APRIL 21, NBC Nightly News reporter Dick Gregory warned that "[s]piking gas prices from coast to coast have created new political pain for an administration already falling in the polls...
...economy, 62 percent were negative-twice the positive tally...
...Despite repeated studies about the biases of reporters or classic examples such as Dan Rather's National Guard story, too many viewers believe what they see on TV news...
...This came only three days after the Times told readers the economy was failing to "offer a prolonged increase in real wages" for the first time since World War II...
...Two years ago, the same slant returned...
...ECONOMICS Dan Gainor Equal Parts Doom and Gloom "-~HE 2006 ELECTION IS A REFERENDUM not just on the President, Iraq, and Republicans, but on the American economy...
...In the 12 months through July 2006, the economy created more than 1.7 million new jobs and unemployment was a shadow of its post9/11 numbers...
...The theme of a falling economy is impossible to avoid...
...That translates into growth of $2.2 trillion, which is roughly the size of the Chinese economy...
...Nothing works...
...And wages have grown, despite a media mantra that they have been stagnant...
...But the facts are there...
...That's just the beginning...
...OCTOBER 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 59...
...Unsurprisingly, 42 percent of the group that saw the bad news about gas prices said they were "worse off" than the year before...
...This isn't the first time...
...Reporters are taught to write on an elementary level, so the price of a tank of gas has become more of an economic measure than the gross domestic product...
...Not even the facts...
...Whether it is the nowwell-documented liberal leanings of many journalists, limited broadcast time, or just doing an easy story, rising gas and oil costs were featured in roughly a third of all economy stories in the study period...
...No matter how much they trumpet, 5.3 percent economic growth in the first quarter, 5.2 million more jobs sinceAugust 2003, or unemployment down to 4.7 percent, there's another number to contend with," he said, referring to negative poll results...
...Eighty-five percent of those stories were negative...
...On July 16, it described its own survey of more than 2,500 online respondents who were shown news clips of either rising gas prices or a story on job growth...
...After a year's worth of such coverage, it's amazing even economists still believe the economy is doing well...
...and layoffs adding the color pink to the red and blue of the electoral map...
...Journalists praised the Clinton unemployment rate of 5.6 percent as "low," but downplayed a 5.4 percent rate under Bush, calling job growth "anemic...
Vol. 39 • October 2006 • No. 8
