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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2007-01-31

Media Hits and Misses . . . [UPDATE]

as in "hit pieces" and "mis-representations"

Front page coverage of the good economic news from today around the online newspapers:

NYTimes: [sound of crickets]

WashPost: U.S.Economy Gains Strength

WashTimes: Bush Assails "Income Inequality"

USAToday: [crickets in the headlines, but halfway down the page there's this:] Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady

The Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post morning editions are not online yet, so I can't really comment on local coverage, though I did notice the the local NBC affiliate, KUSA Channel 9, said very little about the robust economy on the 4 o'clock news.

Robust economy? What robust economy? you may ask.

That is, you would ask if your only source of news was the bigs. Here--let me tell you something:

:the Federal Reserve Board left the prime interest rate unchanged again today

:the 4th quarter Gross Domestic Product (the best measure of the strength of the economy) showed a surprisingly robust 3.5% growth

:the personal price index, an important measure of inflation, actually DECLINED at the fastest rate since 1954

:the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit yet another new all-time high on the heels of the Fed's announcement

:and there's going to be a new jobs report out on Friday, and some economists are predicting that the unemployment rate is going to drop below 4% in 2007

And yet, of the big four newspapers, the front page coverage is silent, misdirective (at best), neutral, and one positive. Shameful.

Surprising? no.

Still shameful.

UPDATE: What's on the front page of the Comcast website? as in, what's the "top news" via the wires as decided by the Comcast gatekeepers? 2006 Personal Savings Drop to 74-Year Low

By the way, the Denver Post reports the economy with the sound of crickets on the front page, and the Rocky Mountain News seems to have missed the story, as well.

Honestly, if it had been the Democrats in power and responsible for this economy in November, they would have built a supermajority on the backs of the media. Only in this media environment could the strength of the economy remain a secret because of who's responsible.
Posted by: Michael / 1/31/2007 11:49:00 PM

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