This story in The New York Times on the latest increase in the unemployment rate reminded me of something that the economist Dean Baker wrote earlier this week:
The media have obviously abandoned economic reporting and instead have adopted the role of cheerleader, touting whatever good news it can find and inventing good news when none can be found.
The Times, in announcing the new rate — an increase, by the way, to a quarter-of-a-century high — couched it in an optimistic light saying
the losses were far smaller than economists expected, amplifying hopes of recovery.
That is, of course, unless you are one of the 350,000 or so to have been kicked out the door last month.
The Times didn’t ignore the realities of the job loss report — it contextualized the oddly optimistic blathering of some economists by making sure to include the doomsayers and talked with people on the edge.
But the headline and lead — too often the only things that people read — painted a much rosier picture. And that, as Baker notes, can only delay the real reckoning.
Hank Kalet 