James Taranto: Out of Work? Blame Reagan.
New figures are out showing the unemployment rate within a hair's breadth of 10%, which means it's time to make fun of the Associated Press for putting a political spin on economic news. Last year, with a Republican in the White House, the AP was eagerly anticipating a recession (which, in fairness, did eventually arrive). This year, by contrast, there always seem to be portents of improvement, no matter how bad things get...
... This does, however, provide an excuse to highlight an interesting new report by the Business and Media Institute, a free-market think tank. The institute's Julia Seymour undertook what sounds like a tedious task: comparing TV network news coverage of unemployment during the Reagan recession and the Obama one:
The Business & Media Institute analyzed network unemployment stories on the evenings that data was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics between March 2009 to September 2009 and March 1982 to September 1982. There were 66 stories in all--35 stories in 2009 and 31 stories in 1982.
The findings are similar to our anecdotal observations of the AP's reporting prior to today. The networks "were 13 times more negative in their treatment of Reagan than Obama." Twenty of 22 stories mentioning the Reagan administration portrayed it negatively, versus 1 out of 15 that mentioned the Obama administration. Most telling is the comparison of how the nets--and, in one case, the same newsman--treated identical unemployment rates during the two recessions:
In 1982, Dan Rather reported the rate as "9.4 percent and rising." Dan Cordtz called it "rising steadily" on ABC, while Ray Brady warned that "job loss is still spreading." NBC found lines at food banks "four times what they were six months ago."
In 2009, ABC found "glimmers of improvement" for an identical unemployment rate. CBS's own economic "grim reaper," Anthony Mason said the "economy's showed signs of improving." NBC also found "positive trends" to discuss--specifically mentioning "2,100 new reasons" to be "hopeful" in Georgia.
But Charles Gibson illustrated how dramatically different the network coverage of Reagan and Obama really were.
Gibson, who was a Capitol Hill correspondent for ABC in 1982, told viewers May 7, 1982, "There really isn't any good news in the statistics. All the numbers are bad." He then quoted two Democratic attacks on Reagan including Rep. Henry S. Reuss, D-Wis., who charged that Reagan's "policies aren't just mistaken, they're wicked."
But as an ABC anchor in 2009, Gibson was full of hope. He introduced that night's story saying "sometimes a bad jobs report can look good."
"345,000 Americans lost their jobs in May, a big number to be sure. Traumatic if you are one of the 345,000. But the number was smaller than economists had predicted, and that's good news," Gibson said before admitting that the unemployment rate of 9.4 percent was "pretty bad." Neither Gibson, nor reporter Betsy Stark mentioned President Obama at all that night.
On Aug. 7, 2009, Gibson suggested "the economy may be finally turning the corner."
Does all this have any political effect? We tend to be skeptical. The Republicans did badly in the 1982 midterm elections, but surely that was because the economy actually was bad. It seems unlikely that happy talk from the networks--whose newscasts are considerably less widely watched now anyway--will save the Democrats next year. Mostly, this sort of thing just hurts the credibility of the media by reinforcing the impression that they are partisan...