Our founding fathers believed a free and independent press – which would serve as a watchdog protecting the nation from the lies, corruption, mismanagement, and demagoguery of politicians – would be utterly essential for a functioning democracy.
It would be nice if we had one.
The fact is that going back decades, the media have become anything but either “independent” or a “watchdog.” Rather than guarding and protecting the truth, they have become the “lapdogs” of the left, licking the faces of Democrats and turning viciously on Republicans, without regard to the truth or the facts.
A study comparing the media’s response to IDENTICAL job loss numbers between Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama pointedly demonstrate the deceit and hypocrisy of the mainstream media. In short, Reagan was given negative coverage 91% of the time, whereas Obama received negative coverage 7% of the time. For some reason, the same media that has repeatedly claimed that Obama “inhereited” the recession could never bring themselves to make a similar claim about Reagan’s inheritance via Jimmy Carter.
There are some useful charts and videos on the Businessandmedia site which hosts this article. I cite the article here merely to preserve the record. My discussion of the ramifications of the article will follow.
Identical Unemployment Numbers ‘Good’ News for Obama, But ‘All’ Bad under Reagan.
Full Report
A study from the Business & Media Institute
By Julia A. Seymour
Executive Summary
PDF Version
These are tough times. More than 3 million people have lost their jobs just since February 2009 and consumer confidence fell unexpectedly in September. The unemployment rate has spiked from 8.1 percent to 9.7 percent in the first seven months of Barack Obama’s presidency and is expected to climb even higher.Despite that grim news, the major news networks have spun their unemployment reports into “good news” and presented Obama positively. Journalists tried hard to present rising job losses in the best possible light.
ABC’s Charles Gibson called the loss of 539,000 jobs in April a “marked improvement” May 8, 2009, because fewer jobs were lost than in March. In June 2009, Gibson was talking again about “hopeful” signs in the job numbers as more Americans were out of work.
But flashback 27 years ago to 1982, the unemployment rate was in roughly the same range as it was in 2009. Yet, network reporters consistently presented the U.S. economy under President Ronald Reagan as the “worst of times” by showing people living out of their trucks under a bridge and collecting free food at a food bank.
CBS reporter Ray Brady told a “tale of two cities” on June 4, 1982. He found the “worst of times” in Waterloo, Iowa, where the unemployment rate was the highest in the nation: 25.4 percent. That was nearly 16 percentage points higher than the national unemployment rate of 9.5 percent. He contrasted Waterloo’s joblessness with 4.6 percent unemployment in Sioux Falls, S.D. where things were “close to” the best of times.
Brady’s report addressed two very different employment situations, but most 1982 reports focused heavily on places where “desperation has turned to hopelessness.” The unemployment rate under Obama and Reagan was nearly identical, yet they received almost exactly opposite treatment from ABC, CBS and NBC reports. Reagan was mentioned negatively in reports 13 times more often than Obama.
While in Obama’s case, reporters found bright spots – like 25 police recruits’ jobs being “saved” by the stimulus package – during Reagan’s term, journalists found tragedy everywhere. They interviewed a battered wife, a family that had run out of food and many unemployed people. One NBC anchor even warned that suicide and murder rates increase in such hard times.
Although there was a difference between the two presidents in how long they had been in office, the spin was still significant. Unemployment numbers rose similarly under both Reagan and Obama, but journalists continued a long-standing trend of spinning the numbers.
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. BMI found that network reports were 13 times more negative in their treatment of Reagan than Obama. In fact, 91 percent of stories (20 out of 22) mentioning Reagan’s administration portrayed it negatively – while only 7 percent (1 out of 15) of Obama administration mentions were negative. Obama was mentioned positively 87 percent of the time (13 out of 15). There was not a single positive mention of the Reagan White House.
Blame for ‘Wicked’ Reagan, but Praise for Obama’s ‘Important’ Stimulus
In 1982, network reports showed desperation, sadness and tragedy as a result of rising joblessness. NBC pictured lines of people waiting outside a food bank and interviewed crisis counselors in Seattle on May 7.
“More callers talk of despair and even suicide,” Don Oliver reported that night, before interviewing Jim and Pam Smalls. Oliver called them “victims of unemployment depression and anger,” because Pam had to seek help from a battered woman’s shelter.
Another network showed people living under a highway overpass out of their trucks because they couldn’t find work. But under Obama the networks found a man “doing backflips” when he was asked to return to work at a Minnesota window company and another man who was thrilled to be hired by a hamburger stand in Arizona.
Network reports on unemployment were mirror opposites. They made Reagan look bad in a huge majority of stories and conversely made Obama look good.
Broadcasts journalists tied “rising” unemployment to Reagan in 1982 by mentioning him in 71 percent of stories (22 of 31), but linked Obama to the economy slightly more than half as often in 2009 – only 40 percent of the time (14 of 35).
When the respective presidents were mentioned, political attacks on the Reagan administration over job losses were commonplace in the 1982 network coverage. Union leaders, Democratic politicians and the unemployed were all quoted blasting Reagan for his economic policies.
NBC’s Irving R. Levine found a soon-to-be unemployed textile worker who “blames President Reagan” for his situation on March 5, 1982. That worker, Gene Biffle, told NBC, “When he went in there he said it, he was gonna get jobs and help the economy, but don’t look like he’s doing too much about that.”Following Levine’s segment, anchor Roger Mudd took Reagan to task himself by responding to statements from the administration:
“Spokesmen for the Reagan White House are coming to dread each month’s unemployment numbers because it gets harder and harder for them to explain. Economic Adviser Weidenbaum says today the figures may mean the economy may be bottoming out. Communications Director Gergen says that while unemployment may get worse, the recession seems to be bottoming out. Meanwhile, more and more people are getting bottomed out.”
In August 1982, Sam Donaldson of ABC highlighted the “partisan savagery” of Congressional Democrats, including Rep. Parren Mitchell’s, D-Md., claim that Reagan was pursuing “sadistic fiscal policies.”
The dark and gloomy tone of 1982 reports was a near polar opposite of the tenor of 2009 unemployment stories.
In 2009, the networks praised Obama for merely trying to stop rising unemployment – even when he wasn’t succeeding. And month after month reporters tried to find the “good news” or signs of a turnaround.
All three nightly newscasts mentioned Obama favorably March 6, 2009, even though 651,000 jobs had been lost in February and unemployment had jumped half a percentage point to 8.1 percent from 7.6 percent. And all three of those broadcasts emphasized a mere 25 jobs “saved” by the stimulus package.
NBC’s Chuck Todd gave Obama credit that night saying, “For these 25 new police officers here in Columbus, Ohio, the president’s stimulus plan didn’t create these jobs, it saved them. Without the money these folks would be looking for a new line of work.”
CBS Anchor Katie Couric revealed her faith in Obama’s stimulus plan that night as well saying, “I know the government is going to be creating jobs, as we’ve mentioned, through this stimulus package.”
After the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced May 8 that more than a half million jobs were lost in April, another CBS anchor, Maggie Rodriguez, looked for a ray of sunshine saying, “There is new hope the sun may be starting to peek through those economic storm clouds tonight,” before delivering the news that unemployment had jumped .4 percent to 8.9 percent nationally.
Rodriguez’ optimism led into Anthony Mason’s report. Mason quoted Obama and emphasized his call for education as the solution to joblessness and request that states allow people to maintain unemployment benefits while going back to school.
Identical Unemployment Rates, Opposite Treatment
The unemployment rate reached 9.4 percent under Reagan and under Obama (twice), but received completely different treatment from the networks – and in one case from the same reporter.
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, “[T]here 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.”
Methodology
The Business & Media Institute analyzed network unemployment stories on the evenings that data was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in similar seven-month periods – 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.
A story was counted as a mention of Obama or Reagan if it named the respective president, the administration, the “White House,” or any administration spokespeople. Each mention was then graded positive, negative or neutral based on context.
Conclusion
Despite having similar periods of rising unemployment, Presidents Reagan and Obama were treated very differently by the network news media. This fit the theme of the network news when it came to economic reporting.
Jobs and unemployment have been one of the most significant economic measures because they impacted everyone so directly. Network viewers who watched coverage of unemployment during the Reagan years were consistently told things were bad. For identical numbers under Obama, those very same networks claimed the economy was improving. That was clear-cut bias.
And it isn’t new. The Business & Media Institute released a Special Report in 2004 called “One Economy, Two Spins” which showed the way similar economic conditions (unemployment, inflation and GDP growth) were presented negatively during the re-election campaigns of George W. Bush’s Republican administration, but positively under Bill Clinton’s Democratic re-election bid.
BMI found that jobs stories in particular were positive more than six times as often under Clinton than Bush. The networks continued to distort the good economy under Bush in 2005 and 2006 giving negative stories more air time and using ordinary people to underscore those downbeat reports.
The Media Research Center also reported in 2004 that the news media sought to discredit Reaganomics with their news coverage. Virginia Commonwealth University professor Ted J. Smith III found that out of 14,000 network news stories between 1982 and 1987 the amount of network TV coverage shrunk and became more negative as the economy improved. When one economic indicator got better, the networks covered it less and focused on something unhealthy about the economy.
Recommendations
State the Facts: Unemployment data, like all economic data, should be presented as is without reporter opinions being inserted into the broadcast. Forecasting job losses or gains should be left only to the experts.
Be Consistent: If 9.4 percent unemployment is bad, then it should be treated so regardless of who is president. If the number discredits a Republican administration, it should also discredit a Democrat.
Use History as a Guide: It is up to the networks to ensure that they cover stories consistently over time. A reporter working on a story about unemployment being the worst in 26 years should consult the coverage from that time for guidance.
Don’t Spin the Economy: Reporters should be embarrassed when they highlight 25 jobs gained after telling viewers 651,000 jobs were lost. If a story is negative, then tell it that way. Don’t allow White House spin from either party to distort the final result.
Because of the media’s dishonest and deceptive propaganda, we end up believing half truths that fundamentally amount to whole lies.
As I set up why this propaganda is so fundamentally dangerous, let me quote myself:
When Ronald Reagan took office from Jimmy Carter, inflation was at a meteoric 13.3% and the country was in the throes of a fierce recession. There was a real question as to whether workers’ wages would keep up with the costs of living, which made people afraid to either spend or save. And nobody knew how to control inflation – which had risen from 1.4% in 1960 to the aforementioned 13.3% in 1980 – causing a real erosion of confidence in the future. Jimmy Carter answered a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”
Reagan DID have a solution, and the result was the Reagan Revolution.
Unemployment had risen to 11%. More businesses failed than at any time since World War II. The picture of the economy was grim, indeed.
And then the Reagan policies – ridiculed by the very same liberal economic theorists whose policies created the inflation to begin with – began to work. And the result – from such terrible beginnings – was the 2nd largest peacetime expansion in American history. And now – to prove that there really is nothing new under the sun, liberal economic theorists are STILL ridiculing Reagan’s successful policy over twenty years after its success changed America.
Carter was at a self-confessed loss to solve the problem of inflation that his own administration had created. It was Ronald Reagan who had the answer to the problem that Democrats had created and which Democrats could not solve.
I refer to the “Network Flip Flops On Jobs” article to evidence the fact that the liberal establishment thoroughly attacked Reagan for his policies. But history clearly reveals that it wasn’t Reagan who was wrong; it was the liberals who attacked and sought to undermine him.
These same entrenched liberal establishment (and in the case of Charles Gibson, as one example, the very same people) have never learned. They continue to believe that up is down and that down is up. As they regard the world through a fundamentally flawed worldview, they simply cannot understand the world as it really is. Rather, they project a liberal abstract template over the world (such as Marxist or socialist theories) which they continue to believe in — no matter how many times it is refuted by history.
We have a media that keeps seeing “unexpected rises in unemployment” and increases that – while clearly bad in and of themselves – are billed as either “better than” or less than expected” and therefore as good news.
An example of such bias is found in a New York Times article on the result of the Bush tax cuts that liberals have tried to kill ever since. The article bagan:
WASHINGTON, July 12 – For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.
They would NOT see that lower taxes stimulated more investment and productivity. It simply HAD to be something else, something that their liberal filters could account for.
Under Bush, good news kept being “unexpected.” Under Obama, it’s always bad news that’s “unexpected.”
Funny how when unemployment fell under Bush, it was always billed as a “Surprise Drop in Unemployment Numbers” or “New Job Growth Greater Than Experts Anticipated.” But when Obama is President it is always the Job losses and rising unemployment that “surprise” the experts.
In this critical time in our nation’s history – when we are more vulnerable to depression than we have been since the Great Depression itself – it is not merely the media’s bias and unfairness that is at issue anymore, though. It is the fact that their unbalanced and prejudiced optimism is leading us toward disaster as they continue to support bad policies.
We are now the Titanic about to run full speed into the iceberg that will sink her. There are icebergs aplenty: icebergs of shockingly high unemployment; icebergs of huge mortgage defaults which will only continue to rise; icebergs of massive and unsustainable debt; icebergs of a devalued currency; icebergs of soon-to-spiral inflation; icebergs of an-out-of-control government that WILL NOT recognize its folly until well after the soon-coming crash that will make the last one look like good times.
Stop and think about it: we’re told that we had a rise in unemployment that was worse than expected. The median expert forecast had been 175,000 jobs lost; the actual number was 263,000. Try way, way worse than expected. The forecasters were a whopping 50% off. But don’t worry; the mainstream media is still quite cheerful and optimistic.
The same media that unfairly and unrealistically demonized Reagan’s highly successful strategy is now unfairly and unrealistically praising Obama’s badly failing strategy.
The actual unemployment rate is 17%. And yet the mainstream media presentation (with only an occasional moment to reflect on sobering news) has just been unrelentingly optimistic. While conservatives and Republicans should rightly be outraged over the media’s bias and propaganda during Republican eras, the greater risk is the destruction that is increasingly likely to occur because the media refuses to critically examine the worsening negative effects of Obama’s policies.
The same people who continued to believe that Reagan was so, so wrong in spite of all evidence to the contrary now just as steadfastly believe that Obama is so, so right. And that should terrify you.
This isn’t just “emperor’s new clothes”; this is wearing a View Master featuring a scenic roadway while driving the country right off a cliff.
Tags: 7%, 91%, ABC, aren't just mistaken, Carter, CBS, Charles Gibson, clear-cut bias, Dan Rather, Democrats, free, hypocrisy, independent, inflation, journalists, Katie Couric, Media, NBC, negative, Obama, press, Ray Brady, Reagan, Reagan's policies, Republicans, spinning the numbers, they're wicked, unemployment, watchdog
Start Thinking Right 
October 5, 2009 at 10:48 am
Really great article. These HYPOCRITES who have gotten wealthy by Reaganomics cling to their wacked utopian ideology that has failed every time it has been tried as history proves.
This administration and the media must be defeated if we have any hope of trying to fix this mess. They are so deranged I don’t even care anymore about trying to reach them. They must be defeated and clear thinking, truth loving people who will do what has proven to work must get back in power.
October 5, 2009 at 2:23 pm
That’s where I’m at, HL: reasoning with a liberal is a waste of time. We can only do our best to prevent the government schools from using brainwashing such as we’re seeing so much of not to create MORE liberals, and to reach the independents who can be persuaded.
Our path is to defeat these people and their false and despicable worldview – not try to accommodate them/it.
And even as we seek to totally defeat these Marxist-fascists before they can ruin our country, we need to make the Republican Party a better representation of the conservative values we believe in.
October 13, 2009 at 1:50 pm
This really is a great article. Its the first to admit and shine the light the Reagan had worse unemployment figures than Obama much farther down the line. The articel fails to mention that the unemployment rose after Reagan signed his tax cut. Obama’s unemployment figures are occuring with Bush’s tax cuts still in place. Its not like he raised taxes to cause the unemployment increase. This article needs to be pastered all over FOX. Reagan the true anointed one for conservtives is a prime example of how the right displays its hypocrisy. All conservatives are stating how our country is comepletly falling apart becase unemployment is not even at 10 percent in less than a year, yet under Reagan it went over 10% well after a year of his policies. Accoridng to the GOP that was acceptable and Reagan was the best president, but the same numbers now udner Obama is the end of our country as we know it. How stupid that on an article of media bias you argue the point for Obama. Classic!
October 13, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Flawed methodology in this article.
Do you think people are that stupid? You compare Obama’s first 7 months to Reagan’s 7 month period in his second year. Huh? Don’t you think Reagan had more positive (at least less negative) media coverage during his first 7 month honeymoon period. Don’t you think he was given the benefit of the doubt and people cut some slack for his inheriting Carters ecoonomy to some extent.
Do you not think that Obama will receive more and more negative coverage if the economy continues to decline? If it continues to decline as we are starting to see some slowdon and recovery. If we use Reagan’s barometer 10% unemployment in the second year will be status quo for inheriting a bad economy from the preceding adminsitration . I’m sure the right will cut Obama the same slack as you did for Reagan…right. That’s not quite what we are hearing now from the right. 10% is unacccepatble (acutally dire consquences that you should all be “terrified” about”) for Obama but ok for Reagan. That is hypocrisy.
So you may make your point with flawed methodoly (further flawed that FOX was left out of the counting for negative stories even though their ratings are the greatest) to prove that there is media bias, but in doing so you have uncovered a much bigger bias of the right and there unabashed negativity towards Obama for having the exact same numbers as Reagan. Thanks for pointing it out.
October 14, 2009 at 5:32 pm
I see that you lack the basic intellectual honesty to realize that Reagan inherited a truly terrible economy from Carter every bit as much as Obama inherited one from Bush.
You utterly fail to deal with the FACT that Jimmy Carter not only admitted that he couldn’t solve the problem of inflation, but that he said that he didn’t even think a solution existed. Reagan solved it. But dealing with shockingly high inflation – and 21% interest rates – left by Carter created a huge problem that required time to resolve. Obama wasn’t forced to deal with EITHER of them. Furthermore, Obama has a significant Democrat majority in both the House and Senate to pass his reforms; Reagan had a hostile House and Senate that tried to block him at every turn.
I also see that you talk about tax cuts as causing unemployment without even bothering to offer any evidence that the one causes the other. The simple fact of the matter is that Reagan’s tax cuts resulted in a DOUBLING of economic productivity and revenue. And tax cuts similarly worked when John F. Kennedy enacted them.
Even LIBERALS are increasingly acknowledging that Obama has failed to deal with unemployment.
Further, analysts like Meredith Whitney predict that unemployment will go up to 13% or HIGHER.
President Clinton changed the way unemployment was calculated in 1994. And by earlier pre-1994 standards Obama’s unemployment rate would be 17%. It’s hard to know if many writers are adjusting their figures to reflect what unemployment is today by 1981 standards.
Finally, you fail to understand that I’m merely judging Obama by his own metric. His administration claimed that if we passed his massive stimulus, unemployment would be kept under 8%. The fact that it has soared above that figure bears being dealt with. When he failed to perform by HIS OWN DAMN CLAIM, he merely demonized Bush and changed his entire story as though nothing had happened.
October 14, 2009 at 5:44 pm
I don’t think people are stupid; I just think YOU are.
First of all, I don’t compare Obama’s first 7 months to Reagan’s 7 months. I cite a study that directly states how the media treated both presidents given identical unemployment rates.
Show me the articles from the mainstream media in ten months into 1981 that reflect this “honeymoon” period you claim.
The funny thing is you are so determined to claim that Fox News is so horribly biased. But all sorts of media studies have concluded just the opposite. YOU’RE the one who is biased.
Sacred Heart university just came out with yet another survey:
You tell me the media isn’t biased to the left, but that only Fox is biased to the right – and again I can only imagine a straight-faced figure who is actually trying to be serious. A UCLA study concludes, “almost all major media outlets tilt to the left,” noting that “Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center.” But you’re probably find that a public university located in liberal California in ultra-liberal Los Angeles is somehow a conservative entity loaded with rightwing bias.
Here are some more media tidbits:
The media has been so blatantly biased throughout its election coverage that it is completely accurate to say that we are now in a propaganda state. There is no possible way that Republicans can win in this media climate: whether you look at the Media Research Center, or at the Project for Excellence in Journalism (or again at their more recent study), or at the University of Wisconsin’s Wisconsin Advertising Project, there is widespread agreement with one longtime ABC journalist that the media is dangerously biased. Pew Research discovered that Americans believe by a 70% to 9% margin that the media is biased in favor of Obama and against McCain. The media now represents a fifth column of government – a propaganda wing – that attacks conservatives and celebrates and defends Democrats and their ideology. Democracy is going extinct in the country that founded democracy, because no free society can survive such a climate of propaganda.
From Media Research:
But you just keep on smoking the crack pipe and watching the news so you can find the “conservative bias.”
October 15, 2009 at 4:08 am
Talk about intellectual dishonesty. You absolve yourself of responsiblity of reporting flawed information by stating you simply cited a flawed report comparing 2 different time periods. That’s called cherry picking data and its pure propaganda. You probably didn’t even notice the time difference cited in the report showing you either lack the intellect to notice or worse yet your knew and continue to pass on flawed information to make your point.
Additional intellectual dishonesty by trying to rationalize that Reagn inherited a worse economy than Obama by citing only 2 financial indicators. Funny how you all state that this is Obama’s economy now and that is responsible for this unemployment, yet Reagan well into his second years was still dealing with Carter’s economy and Carter’s unemployment rate. You truly cannot see how upside down that logic is?
It took Reagan years and 2 terms to turn the economy around. In fact it didn’t turn around until he started to raise taxes again (http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0608-01.htm). I only cited the tax cut because it was a major financial policy decision so even you have to admit it had to have had some effect unless your argument is it doesn’t matter what Reagan did, the numbers still would have tanked. IF that’s so we would have to use the same logic for Obama and he be given the same benefit of the doubt. In fact its because of the democratic congress and a pragmatic Reagan that we were abke to raise taxes again to help the economy overall in the longrun. Leaving his original tax cut in place would have been disastrous.
As for the judgment of his own metric, Obama stated that goal early on based on the financial “intelligence” at the time (Sound familiar). He didn’t hit that number so now he’s a complete failure for missing one proposed number? Hmmm Bush and his administation, based on his intellignece at the time, swore that Iraq had WMDs and stated we needed to go to war. He shared this flawed intelligence to convince congress and the American people to go to war. He was wrong as Obama was wrong, but which had more dire consequnces. Why does Obama’s missed goal seem so much worse then Bush’s? Could it be hypocrisy?
Finally as for the media bias, I made no mention that the MSM is not biased and just rightly mentioned that leaving Fox out of the report skews the data tremendously if the report is counting negative stories. Again a neat way to push propaganda by cherry picking data. Besides in the grand scheme of things who the heck even watches the main stream media news? People wathcing those networks are watching reality TV just look at the ratings. Do you truly think that people are watching Nightline news at night? Compare those rating to FOX ratings. Fox boasts its cable rating as being the biggest and your right leaning news and commentary are on primetime reaching milloins more every night while the liberal media is cashing in on its people watching reality TV. You make the issue much worse than it is.
October 15, 2009 at 8:33 pm
It’s not a flawed report, Raul. And it’s a very intellectually dishonest thing for you to say that it is.
As we speak, it is VERY close to the end of the year. That means we are VERY close to the beginning of next year. Now, if you are right, and the “second year” thing is crucial, then in January of 2010 the media which has been in the tank for Obama will immediately denounce him and his policies the way they were documented to have done to Reagan.
Unemployment is expected to continue to climb into 2010. That means, on your view, that it will be totally Obama’s responsibility in three months – and that the media will start demonizing him. That is what you say will and should happen, based on what happened to Reagan.
Don’t worry. The media will continue to protect Obama. And prove your entire thesis is crap.
Your “raising taxes” solution to the economy is the butterfly theory applied to economics. When a butterfly in India flaps its wings, we get a tsunami on the other side of the planet.
You think raising taxes is good? Good. Let’s raise the tax rate to 100%, and things will go just great. That will be great for jobs, because the higher the taxes, the better the economy. And people will just go on working harder than ever, even though it’s completely pointless for them and they have no incentive to produce anything.
You people cause all kinds of damage, and never understand what you did. Earlier this year, Democrats who think just like you raised the minimum wage. I have the documented record preserved that conservative economist David Neumark predicted that it would kill 300,000 teen jobs. Well, guess what? He was wrong; it didn’t cost 300,000 jobs – it cost 330,000 jobs.
You people are incapable of understanding the most obvious law of economics: when you tax something, or raise the cost of something, you get LESS of it.
Hey, I got an idea: let’s pass the luxury tax again so you fools can learn the same lesson all over again. Remember when Democrats passed it? Conservatives predicted exactly what would happen: whole industries that depended on luxury items like yachts were gutted. The yacht industry went to crap; the small businesses that thrived on maintaining yachts went to crap. Because raising taxes is stupid. But you’re just too stupid to figure that out.
For the record, the states with the HIGHEST TAX RATES are the states with the biggest problems. Look at California and New York. Put that into your butterfly theory.
What never ceases to amaze me is that people like you show up denouncing me for my “intellectual dishonesty” when YOU have a giant boatload of intellectual dishonesty yourself. Let me block quote you:
You demonized Bush for years for missing his “number” (and there’s a lot more to say about that). But now you want to let Obama completely off the hook, like his claiming that he would hold unemployment down under 8% IF his $3.27 trillion porkulus gets passed is just a trivial oversight. You damn Bush to hell, but you can’t criticize your messiah. And I’m the one who has a problem with intellectual dishonesty.
Btw, your last paragraph is utter nonsense. I conclusively demonstrated that the media is biased to the left. I showed that the best evidence gives Fox News status as truly fair and balanced. And Fox News isn’t a relevant factor in the study that you are coming out damning as “dishonest” because Fox News didn’t even EXIST when Ronald Reagan was president.