Unemployment under President Barack Obama is at a 26-year-high. The last time the economy had 9.7 percent or higher unemployment was under President Ronald Reagan. But despite similar periods of rising unemployment, Obama and Reagan received almost exactly opposite treatment from the network news media.

Under Obama reporters have gone to great lengths to spin rising unemployment by finding “positive trends” in the job losses, even focusing on as few as 25 jobs being “saved” by the economic stimulus package. But when Reagan was president journalists showed unemployed families living out of their cars under a bridge in Texas and quoted Democrats or union leaders’ attacks on the president’s “wicked” and “sadistic” fiscal policies...

... The Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute examined network unemployment stories on the evenings that unemployment data was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from March 2009 to September 2009 and March 1982 to September 1982. During that timeframe in 1982 unemployment ranged from 8.9 percent to 9.8 percent, and in 2009 it shot up even faster – from 8.1 percent to 9.7 percent...