Did Bad Economic Reporting Doom Harris?

[GigiLeigh]

{Snip}

But it gets worse. The media decided that they had to push the theme of the bad economy even when they had to invent stories. The New York Times had a major July 4th weekend piece telling us that some people are doing well, while less well-off workers are falling behind. To make the latter point it chose to profile a low-paid worker, who it acknowledged was atypical, in that her pay had fallen well behind inflation. Why would the paper choose to highlight the experience of a low-paid worker, that it knows is atypical, to exemplify the situation of the larger group of low-paid workers?

To take another example from the NYT, columnist Peter Coy (generally a very good columnist), headlined a column “why can’t college grads find jobs?” In fact, unemployment among recent grads is near a 20-year low. The grain of truth in the piece is that the small share of recent grads who are unemployed (around 4.0 percent) are taking longer than usual to find new jobs. As a great example of how totally wrongheaded views permeate outward from the elite news outlets, the next week the Washington Post pushed the same line about unemployment among recent college grads.

For another example of a totally invented catastrophe, in the summer of 2022 the Washington Post discovered that a record number of people were working two full-time jobs. If they done their homework, they would have noticed that it was not a record as a share of the workforce. That record was set in July of 2000, which was the very peak of the late 1990s economic boom, usually thought to be the best year economically since the 1960s boom. Since less than 0.3 percent of the workforce fell into this category, it should have occurred to the paper that this was not a good measure of economic pain. This story was picked up the following week by Marketplace radio.

https://cepr.net/did-bad-economic-reporting-doom-harris/

[Silent Type]

1. 9 months ago we went from people are living "paycheck to paycheck" to this is best economy ever.

Don’t think that helped.

[Walleye]

2. TV news reporter: "the economy is great. Why aren't people feeling it"

Oh, I don’t know? TV news reporter, you tell me why people don’t know it

[BannonsLiver]

3. One of the major factors

They had half the country believing they were in Somalia so poor they had to burn shit logs for heat. I also don’t recall any clarifications about the impact of bird flu on egg prices, either. I guess it was too science-y for the dullards.

[doc03]

4. This doesn't involve the news media. But every day I hear numerous ads on TV and the

Serious Progressive Channel stating, "In this bad economy", "Due to the recent downturn in the economy",
Due to "Todays high inflation" "Due to these uncertain times". I know there is nothing we can do, they are just
advertising stuff. When people hear that message day after day and very little pushback from Democrats in
Congress people start believing the lies. Like Pete Buttigieg said in an interview last night. We have like 70000
infrastructure projects that are going to start in next 4 years and Trump and Republicans will be at every one of
them cutting the ribbon and taking credit. Democrats are always afraid to own our accomplishments, for fear
Republicans will say, "Well what are you doing about some other problem".

[edhopper]

5. Yes

They kept telling us how people feel about the economy in an echo chamber of bullshit, while rarely saying how the economy actually was.

[flamingdem]

6. They do it for clicks

for that they need fear and conflict.

[cadoman]

7. the problem with economic reporting is it doesn't take into account those w/out stocks/homes

And TBH it predates both Biden and Trump. I think those w/stock & homes have done well under the modern economy and I'm glad they have been blessed.

For the rest of us, it's a madscrabble quest to pay food & rent, pay insurance on medical/auto, pay debt on education/medical/auto/credit cards.

Many of us have seen no tangible wealth accumulation in our lifetimes. Just bills, debt, and insurance payment to prevent "the worst case"--but it feels like we're already living it. When my grandparents were growing up they could provide so much bounty from a single job... And the college degrees don't seem to have helped like our teachers said they would.