I believe it was CBS that recently ran a piece in which Ted Koppel sat with a group of Trump voters probing their views. Said one to Koppel, regarding the network news, "we don't watch because we don't believe they're telling us the truth." It looks like the members of the Red Tribe have recognized narrative, but are complicating the problem by filling the gap with information from even less reliable sources. MEMO to the MSM: When you lose a credibility contest with a grifter/con artist/pathological liar, it's time to take stock of your profession.
I have always wondered why they have an ongoing fixation on Trump voters, people who hang out in diners wearing MAGA caps, vaccine refusers and "stop the stealers." Democrats were never asked about their opinions on Trump. Now we're not being asked our opinions on Biden, either.
Johnny Carson once said: “The best guests are the ones with a chip on their shoulder” - dude had a lot of experience in that area… :) Yes, I just referred to News as having an Entertainment bias, sadly…
Eric, this is the FIRST time it’s been explained to me how the jobs reports are arrived at, and why revisions are made later. Very important for Americans to understand. You explained it clearly in one paragraph. Why is it so hard for msm to get that out to the public? That’s their job, or should be. Clearly wash, rinse, repeat as noted above. It’s the narrative they cling to in spite of the increasing (🤞) sound of critical voices inside the media tent. Pitiful and dangerous to the negative way the public views the economy versus what’s really true.
And after they create the reality the media pretends that have had nothing to do with the public’s perception that Biden is doing a bad job on the economy (or covid).
Here is a quote from Chris Cillizza:
“My job is to assess not the rightness of each argument but to deal in the real world of campaign politics in which perception often (if not always) trumps reality. I deal in the world as voters believe it is, not as I (or anyone else) thinks it should be. And, I'm far from the only one."
Here is Charles Pierce’s answer to that dangerous attitude:
“Perception is perception and reality is reality and, if they don't match up, then it is the job of journalism not to accept the perception as the reality, but to hammer home the reality until the perception conforms to this.”
There can be only one explanation for the media’s constant pessimism toward the Biden White House. They want the Dems to lose in the midterms. No other reason matches the facts when you compare the narrative to the actual results. A massive voter turnout is the only thing that will save our democracy come November. Short of that, we’re a breath away from Hungary west.
Yep. The media didn’t give nearly the attention to that good news than they did to the lower than expected numbers.
I recently heard Austen Goolsbee say that another reason for the numbers being too low is that there have been a lot of new businesses created and those employers won’t be included in the survey of jobs for awhile.
If you think that WashPost headline is "pretzel logic," try reading the article. I think everyone who did probably had a headache when they were finished. The piece babbles confusing "comparisons" of job figures to population sizes, yet it buries this nugget which is easy to miss as your mind slowly shuts down while attempting to untwist the pretzel: "...Americans are experiencing a surge in job security. There are more openings per job seeker than there have been at any other time since the government started keeping track in 2000, said University of Minnesota economist Aaron Sojourner, who worked in the White House during the Obama and Trump administrations. The number of part-time workers who want full-time work continues to fall rapidly, as employers are asking staff to work longer hours."
The incentive structure of MSM suffers from the same short-term incentive structure of every other US industry...a bias against democracy. The idea that journalists would hold back information vital to national security and accountability, allowing participants in the Trump administration to soothe their consciences (via 'anonymous conversations' with journalists vs testimony before Congress) is despicable. In the long-term, autocracies always destroy the freedom of the press, but the US media is consumed with short-term profit. Just as corporations ignoring voter suppression/nullification laws now will inevitably be extorted by a Putin-esque regime, media companies will continue to ignore the dangers of deliberately skewed reporting until it's too late.
A further problem with the initial BLS numbers of late is that person signing off on them is a leftover Trump appointee who, like a good (or is that every?) Republican, puts party before nation.
The Liberally Biased Mainstream Media™ so badly want to see Republicans back in power, because the GOP's evil incompetence is very profitable for them. They were at their absolute worst during the 2016 Presidential campaign where they sought to destroy Hillary Clinton while elevating Drumpf and his incompetent brand of corruption. and the end results speak for themselves!😠😡🤬
I keep returning to the internet meme of “You have one job...” whenever we turn to the subject of why our Failed Press ™ cannot seem to find it in themselves to issue corrections to their shoddy reporting, especially in the business pages.
We know economics is not a science as much as the business reporters claim it to be, and the market is never rational. It’s all a crap shoot and so these reporters expertise is suspect at best.
If the reporters cannot admit that they consistently got it wrong month after month when this is supposed to be their expertise, well, why would readers trust them ever again? Pundits are extremely bad at their jobs. If you or I had this kind of track record at work, we would be escorted to the door with a roadmap and a cheese sandwich.
Srsly - seems to fall into the ‘people are saying’… category. Are they/we REALLY (mostly) saying /thinking that? Some of those statements are pretty big claims :/
Have you been following the problems involving the CDC's guidelines on handling the current Covid-19 surge due to the Omicron variant?
Left-leaning critics have been accusing the agency of kowtowing to corporate America & Republicans, particularly in the case of the reduction of the quarantine time from ten to five days.
Anyway, they're also accusing the Biden administration of being just as bad as the Trump administration in handling the surge of Covid-19 cases because the government won't call for lockdowns, tell people to stay at home, and provide financial assistance for individuals and small businesses.
Basically, they're saying they won't vote for the Democrats in the 2022 midterms because the party supposedly doesn't care about the people they claim to serve, and are willing to let them die in the name of captialism.
The pessimism goes so far to the point they don't believe the Democrats can protect democracy, because they haven't been able to pass the Votings Rights Act into law, and because the Justice Department hasn't gone after the bigger fish involved in planning and inciting the January 6th insurrection.
P.S. Do you follow the Left-leaning seastersjones Instagram account? They've been very pessimistic lately with their posts (particularly those of Bree Newsome Bass).
I have seen and heard a lot of criticism of Biden’s handling of the pandemic by the media. Morning Joe has been screaming about him not having had enough tests ready for this new variant — the variant that is so much more contagious and has taken health officials by surprise not only here, but in other countries. Most of those countries are also scrambling to get enough tests.
As if that isn’t enough negative spin today the WaPo has this top article:
“U.S. emissions surged in 2021, putting the nation further off track from its climate targets”
Anyone who has thought about it for a second realizes that this was inevitable given how shut down the economy has been and how few people have been driving. And then there is the fact that the GDP is better than it was even before the pandemic when the stable genius was in office. That additional production also increases energy consumption.
In contrast I have seen a lot of reminders by the media that the jump in jobs comes from an unnaturally low pandemic level so it’s not as big a deal as it looks.
It really feels like the media is trying to destroy Biden, while simultaneously obsessing about the dire threat Republicans pose to our democracy.
Excellent points. I stopped watching Morning Joe back in the spring when he and Willy wouldn't stop whining about having to still wear a mask when they'd been vaccinated for months (I wasn't able to be vaxxed yet in my state at that point!). They kept hammering on the CDC. As to the jobs reports, yep, I've seen stories that Biden hasn't "added" any jobs—we're just getting back the ones lost at the beginning of the pandemic; "there is NO new job growth" so not big deal. Ugh.
It really does feel like they want to destroy Joe and his administration—and anyone on the side of reason. Glenn Kessler dedicated a whole fact checker column to Sonya Sotomayor, excoriating her for being off on her numbers about children impacted by Covid during the oral arguments on vaxx mandates—and giving Gorsuch a complete pass and even dismissing his wildly wrong statement.
I don't think the media is obsessing enough about the threat the GOP poses; they are gleefully tuned into the politics of the midterms and a Congress run by Kevin McCarthy and Jordan (my stomach heaved writing that).
The CCCP wants the Republicans to get Congress back. They can't wait for them to impeach Joe and Kamala on "stealing the election". Oh and don't forget they will endlessly grill Hunter over his laptop...
The Beltway buffoons want the conflict-filled drama of a Republican-controlled Congress because the Biden administration is "boring" and the "Dems in Disarray" narrative isn't enough to get eyeballs and clicks.
They don't want a functioning government, they want a reality show to cover while somehow ignoring the terrible legislation that the Republicans want to introduce.
In case anyone doubts that the media really does get bored by serious politicians here is a quote from that august “Dean of Washington Journalism”, the late David Broder about Gore’s acceptance speech:
"But, my, how he went on about what he wants to do as president," wrote Broder. "I almost nodded off."
This is so typical. Kessler also nit picked Hillary to death. A good example of bias on the part of fact-checkers is Politifact claiming the Lie of the Year in 2011 was Democrats saying that Republicans had voted to end Medicare when they voted for Paul Ryan’s proposal to privatize Medicare and replace it with vouchers. Readers voted the Republican blatantly false claim that Obama’s stimulus didn’t create any jobs as the biggest lie of that year. The estimate by experts was that it had actually added 2.5 million jobs.
Politifact lost me for good with "you can keep your health care plan if you like it" as lie of the year. Still cleaning brains off the wall from that head exploder.
I wish those Ohio State wrestlers would bring a civil suit against Jordan. At the very least the media should stop ignoring it. They didn’t do that with Joe Paterno whose reputation was ruined because he ignored what Jerry Sandusky was doing.
They were happy to excoriate and old man who couldn't conceive of such monstrosity happening within his own ranks and by a person he'd long considered a friend. Yet they ignore the accusations against both Jordan and Madison Cawthorn. The Cawthorn accusations happened at the same time as Andrew Cuomo, yet crickets.
And then it comes out that ol' Ron DeSadist let a million test kits expire in Florida...and the Corporate Controlled Conservative Press plays that down...
The media are trying to have their cake, and eat it too.
They're aware of the threat to democracy coming from the Republicans, but are too wielded to their "Biden is next Carter" narrative to realize they're part of the problem.
The progressives have been threatening not to vote for months now. They are incensed that Biden hasn’t forgiven every penny of their school loan debt, and that he didn’t throw Trump in jail. They yammer on social media that Biden has done “nothing.” Schumer and Warren do themselves no favors by harping on cancelling school loan debt too.
Most infuriating is saying Biden is the same as Trump on Covid. It is incredibly frustrating. I am no fan of Rachel Walensky, the head of the CDC, but it is the media who is causing confusion over guidelines. I love when they accuse her of bad messaging because they were the same ones who bent over backward to tell us what Trump “meant to say.” Media is also demanding Biden call teachers an essential service and force them to keep schools open no matter what, because they are tired of the pandemic, tired of their kids, and have declared it over. The Atlantic, with few exceptions (Ed Yong), has been especially bad along with David Leonhardt of the Times. There was a whiny piece in Atlantic by a woman who claimed to be a staunch Dem but now thinks the parties are the same because of, you guessed it, school closings from Covid. Of course her kids are 5 and 3, the oldest is in kindergarten. It was just another crap take, along with always emphasizing the vaxx refusers (700 let go) when more than 99% (like 80K) of a company’s employees complied.
Journalists are doing a crap job, know we know they are doing a crap job, and just don’t care. They twist the criticism, accusing us of not wanting them to report “honestly” about our side.
I wonder where this ‘Every-Problem-Has-To-Be-Solved-By-The-Midterms-Or-Else’ mentality came from…(maybe it’s always been present in US politics to a degree)… But these are NOT normal times. Some issues are global. We are fighting big problems on multiple fronts (and some are just ginned up!) Are you telling me that JOE B. is acting in bad faith? Just embarrassing and childish:/ It takes time to get up to speed. This is a management project of 330M - come ON. Tired of the (short) fruit-fly memory syndrome - which does NOT benefit the people who are working at bettering things, btw…
Duh. What pandemic? It’s as though msm has long ago forgotten the conditions under which the world is living. So, they ignore it and report out with NO context vis a vis the historical hardships all of us are experiencing, as though everything is back to normal and so they report w/in that past norm, not the present one. But the testing…..
They refuse to believe that actual change takes time (like an in-depth airtight criminal investigation) and are "tired" of hearing that when they see a viral tweet campaign have an impact—like getting someone fired—in a matter of hours or days.
A viral tweet campaign is very different from actual legislation.
I'm sure they're aware of the realities, but somehow chose to ignore it because of the misguided belief the legislative process is a sprint, but in reality it's a long marathon.
Canceling school loan debt is not a winning issue. There are too many voters who paid for their own education as well as the education of their children. No one went into school loan debt with their eyes closed.
Completely agree. There are things I would totally go along with to ease their debt load, but just outright cancelling is nuts—almost but not quite as insane as NYC City Council voting to allow undocumented citizens to vote.
Oh, don't you know "their 18-year-old brains were undeveloped so they really didn't know what they were doing when they signed the loan agreement"? That was an actual excuse used by someone on Twitter.
And let's not forget that Biden has cancelled billions of college loan debt. However, he's done it for the most deserving. He's helped those that were disabled, and unable to pay back due to that disability, and he's worked to help those that were the victims of predatory lending, especially for those for-profit colleges. The Biden administration is also working to make the loan forgiveness programs easier to take advantage of.
Tired of that narrative - read probably the same story of some voters now switching to independent simply because their legitimate college loans were not wiped clean.
And the "why is Trump not in jail yet" are driving me nuts. As if you can just easily throw the ex-president in jail. Despise Trump as much as anyone, but people should have some type of understanding, or maybe maturity, to realize how difficult that is to do, and rightfully so.
Well, Charlie, I think they kinda held their breath and knowingly closed their eyes to the high debt they have incurred and must repay. My 2 very middle class grandsons are in debt to the tune of $100k each with no choice other than to forego a college degree they cannot afford for a job that doesn’t pay well w/o a college degree. Imo, eliminating college debt for those students who need some relief is fair. In 1979 I incurred a $5k college debt to the feds and paid it off w/ monthly payments over 10 years. Manageable for me. Ages ago for sure, but for some students today, tuition, other expenses are very high, too high. Somethings gotta give. Means testing maybe?
There are myriad reasons why college costs are so high and lots of blame to go around (from state GOP govt slashing funding to state schools) to students demanding four-star hotel-like facilities to schools paying Deans like CEOs and CFOs in the private sector to the federal govt, led by the GOP, cancelling govt student loan programs and refusing to limit interest rates.
But no one held a gun to your grandsons' heads forcing them to go into debt for six figures each, unless they are doctors or lawyers (we can have a whole discussion about that, I'm all for loan forgiveness if they are willing to work in underserved areas across the country for a set number of years).
We did everything in our power to talk my stepdaughter out of going to an expensive private school where she carried a large amount of debt. But you know what? She worked her butt off babysitting (it's obscene how much you can make doing that today), working tons of odd jobs wherever she could (she also had a full time job with a low salary), cutting costs where possible, and spending little money. She paid her debt off—it was her sole focus in the five years after she graduated. So should we pay her back that 70 grand she paid off while cancelling your grandsons' debts? For the average voter who didn't go to college and whose kids aren't going to college—which is still the majority of Americans—this is a no win issue.
A college degree shouldn't be prohibitively expensive—especially when schools rake in billions for air time rights to sports—but personal responsibility comes into this too.
You got my personal back up. One is a teacher in Roxbury, MA where most of Boston’s poorest folks live. Lord knows he did not attend a top notch Ivy League or otherwise school. The other is in a state college. Of course guns were not held to their heads but there is a reality to the financial challenges they face as they make their way into the world as productive citizens. Nuance and real world experiences are important to understanding what is at stake as I’m sure you know. For sure their debts will be paid, but at the expense of other goals eg home buying, families being pushed way down the road. Not wanting anyone other than those kids to pay for their own education as I did, but it is an outrageous climb.
I do get it and I feel for them, I really do. And yes, add teachers to the exemption. Most definitely DO NOT get paid what they are worth. I'm not saying, tough luck (though it probably comes off this way). I think there are myriad things the govt can do to help, from capping interest rates and forgiveness on that interest, to changing bankruptcy laws, to expanding programs like TeachAmerica, the old Americorps, and creating new ones for doctors, lawyers, artists, etc. like we did during the Depression.
I get it about home ownership and all that. I never had children or owned a home (before the past few years and only by a family death) because I couldn't afford to have them—I just didn't make that kind of money because of where I lived, the industry I worked in, my particular job, and coming from a poor family.
But those were all choices that I made. It's not fair, of course it's not fair and it shouldn't be this way. But that is the hard reality of our lives—so much for "a new day in America." Reagan ushered a new age all right, but not the one most (clueless) voters expected.
I want your grandsons to get relief, but wiping all the debt away isn't the answer. People already resent/hate the college educated; this will enrage them even more.
It seems the progressives seem to forget that a Republican-controlled House, Senate & White House means their agenda will completely be lost while the GOP dismantles democracy as we know it.
It annoys me that they seem to forget the inherent messiness in democracy that they claim to uphold. I'm sure they know the legislative process is a hard-fought and often long drawn battle that may involve making compromises. However, their own impatience, and tendency to set overly high standards gets in the way of the nitty-gritty reality.
Yes to every word. Too many forget that it took the GOP decades to achieve dominance. The Powell Memo was written in 1971 (https://law2.wlu.edu/deptimages/Powell%20Archives/PowellMemorandumTypescript.pdf) They want change NOW NOW NOW and if they don't get exactly what they want immediately, than the system is broken and all Dems (with few exceptions) are really just GOP.
That's been a problem that I have noticed with the American progressive movement for years.
I'm guessing the younger members of the Dems Progressive Caucus don't like the narrative of incremental change because it requires them to put a lot of effort to convince their much older moderate colleagues to vote for more progressive policies.
It's not even them. They've been very good partners with the moderates and the president, with a few exceptions. It's all those voters out there who call themselves left or believe in left policies but refuse to join any party (and then think they deserve to vote in primaries to choose who the party rep will be!). We need a modern version of schoolhouse rock on TickTok, Instagram, and Twitter. Maybe that will get through.
Thanks for the clarification that it's the left or left-leaning voters that are the problem here.
They don't realize that removing themselves from the political process just because it's not going their way is counterproductive since it means the voters who identify with the right or are right-leaning can have a greater say compared to them.
They should be worried about that because it means their agenda will go up in smoke and the GOP agenda of a white, straight & Christian agenda will either lead to concentration camps &/or mass genocide.
They don't care if Democrats win or not. In fact, they want Democrats to lose badly so that they can try and takeover the Democratic Party. That would definitely be the end of America were that to happen!
Yup. The Justice "Democrats" stated that on their web site and on Twitter but they've since scrubbed the site and deleted the tweets. A few people on Twitter kept the screen shots so they have the receipts.
Just got the CJR newsletter and the lead comment is about "The messaging mess among Biden's top health officials." It gives a bit of criticism to journalists because "there is a danger of conflating the CDC's communication of its guidance and the wisdom of the guidance itself." But then it ends with "Such stories bear on communication, but are ultimately about much more than that. There are many ways to shoot yourself in the foot." So no matter if it's journalists confusing the public. it's still Biden's fault.
Ugh, how did journalists lose their sense of self-reflection?
It seems many of them are too focused on writing stories with the facts distorted to suit a narrative that guarantees eyeballs and clicks on their employer's websites, and an easy payday for them.
It's disappointing how corporatization has affected America's newsrooms that the truth has been sacrificed for the financial bottom line.
This has been going on for decades, long before the corporatization of newsrooms caused by those buyouts. Just look at the way the media has covered for GHW Bush’s years of lying about his involvement in Iran Contra, repeatedly claiming to have been “out of the loop”. His pardons of all his co-conspirators kept Bush’s own diary of all those meeting he hadn’t attended from being presented as evidence at Caspar Weinberger’s trial. Bush had even withheld that diary from investigators, only turning it over after they had found out he had kept one.
The media showed much more sustained outrage about Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich — a pardon that top Israeli officials had begged him to issue — than they have showed over Bush’s pardons. The Iran Contra Independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh, a lifelong Republican, publicly accused Bush of completing the coverup with his pardons but when Bush died there was almost no mention of that blatant obstruction of justice. The media knows that, unlike the Monica Lewinsky lie, Iran Contra was a blatantly unconstitutional conspiracy by Reagan and his top people.
Thanks for the context. It's frustrating that the Beltway media establishment have been covering up Republican wrongdoing while always attacking Democrats for every infraction, minor or imagined.
Top epidemiologist I follow has more of a problem with the FDA than the CDC (though inexplicably, there is some outdated mask info on the CDC site - of all places).
The UK and other countries are wrestling with the same issues as we are. No one wants to shut down their economies again. The media needs to stop pretending there is are magic solutions to our problems that Biden could solve with magical powers if he wanted to.
The same perverse logic works in reverse, as any reader here will know. Somehow those expectations are always exceeded or downplayed in some way or another.
I believe it was CBS that recently ran a piece in which Ted Koppel sat with a group of Trump voters probing their views. Said one to Koppel, regarding the network news, "we don't watch because we don't believe they're telling us the truth." It looks like the members of the Red Tribe have recognized narrative, but are complicating the problem by filling the gap with information from even less reliable sources. MEMO to the MSM: When you lose a credibility contest with a grifter/con artist/pathological liar, it's time to take stock of your profession.
Gee I wonder why nobody in the Brain Dead Press Corpse ever wants to speak to Biden voters?
Maybe they are afraid that we will call them on their bullshit "both-sides-do-it" crapline. I certainly would.
Smart critics and their own colleagues have been calling them out for it. They write it off as sour grapes and roll their collective eyes.
I have always wondered why they have an ongoing fixation on Trump voters, people who hang out in diners wearing MAGA caps, vaccine refusers and "stop the stealers." Democrats were never asked about their opinions on Trump. Now we're not being asked our opinions on Biden, either.
Why?
Because the Press Corpse LOVES Trump! He brings in the $$$$$!
And when they bring Trump back they will be the first ones sent to the gulags.
Either that or the firing squad.
Certainly not MAGA Maggie; and TFG love/hates the NYT.
Make no mistake, he hates them because of the expose' the Times did on the tax scams Fred pulled when he was a landlord.
Axis Maggie will do just fine.
Historically, it's likely, along with the intellectuals, scientists, etc.
Johnny Carson once said: “The best guests are the ones with a chip on their shoulder” - dude had a lot of experience in that area… :) Yes, I just referred to News as having an Entertainment bias, sadly…
Eric, this is the FIRST time it’s been explained to me how the jobs reports are arrived at, and why revisions are made later. Very important for Americans to understand. You explained it clearly in one paragraph. Why is it so hard for msm to get that out to the public? That’s their job, or should be. Clearly wash, rinse, repeat as noted above. It’s the narrative they cling to in spite of the increasing (🤞) sound of critical voices inside the media tent. Pitiful and dangerous to the negative way the public views the economy versus what’s really true.
i agree. for yrs i've read ref to "expectations" without there being any explanation for where this all-powerful entity comes from
I've often wondered who these a-hole "analysts" are. I am assuming many are the same imbeciles who helped give us the 2008 financial collapse.
ha. maybe!
So when reality doesn’t meet expectations, it’s reality’s fault. When it can generate a negative headline for Democrats, anyway.
yes, it’s all abt creating the reality
And after they create the reality the media pretends that have had nothing to do with the public’s perception that Biden is doing a bad job on the economy (or covid).
Here is a quote from Chris Cillizza:
“My job is to assess not the rightness of each argument but to deal in the real world of campaign politics in which perception often (if not always) trumps reality. I deal in the world as voters believe it is, not as I (or anyone else) thinks it should be. And, I'm far from the only one."
Here is Charles Pierce’s answer to that dangerous attitude:
“Perception is perception and reality is reality and, if they don't match up, then it is the job of journalism not to accept the perception as the reality, but to hammer home the reality until the perception conforms to this.”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a28621/perception-and-reality/
Too bad more journalists don’t think like Charlie.
Kellyanne Conway understood it perfectly when she coined the term "alternative facts."
I know it’s a bit late to comment on this, but she could have called it ‘alternate perspectives’… geez
I don’t consider claims like hydrocholoquine cures covid to be an alternate perspective.
You’re right! 100% ‘FACTS’… (my quotes)
Cillizza and Chuck Todd are both in need of a savage trash can beatdown that would please Sonny Corleone!
That’s the really scary part.
There can be only one explanation for the media’s constant pessimism toward the Biden White House. They want the Dems to lose in the midterms. No other reason matches the facts when you compare the narrative to the actual results. A massive voter turnout is the only thing that will save our democracy come November. Short of that, we’re a breath away from Hungary west.
Both October and November were also revised upwards a few days ago with minimal attention.
and some recent revisions have been 100k+ jobs
Never mind just saw your tweet!
Just saw the December number was revised to 510,000.
Yep. The media didn’t give nearly the attention to that good news than they did to the lower than expected numbers.
I recently heard Austen Goolsbee say that another reason for the numbers being too low is that there have been a lot of new businesses created and those employers won’t be included in the survey of jobs for awhile.
If you think that WashPost headline is "pretzel logic," try reading the article. I think everyone who did probably had a headache when they were finished. The piece babbles confusing "comparisons" of job figures to population sizes, yet it buries this nugget which is easy to miss as your mind slowly shuts down while attempting to untwist the pretzel: "...Americans are experiencing a surge in job security. There are more openings per job seeker than there have been at any other time since the government started keeping track in 2000, said University of Minnesota economist Aaron Sojourner, who worked in the White House during the Obama and Trump administrations. The number of part-time workers who want full-time work continues to fall rapidly, as employers are asking staff to work longer hours."
The incentive structure of MSM suffers from the same short-term incentive structure of every other US industry...a bias against democracy. The idea that journalists would hold back information vital to national security and accountability, allowing participants in the Trump administration to soothe their consciences (via 'anonymous conversations' with journalists vs testimony before Congress) is despicable. In the long-term, autocracies always destroy the freedom of the press, but the US media is consumed with short-term profit. Just as corporations ignoring voter suppression/nullification laws now will inevitably be extorted by a Putin-esque regime, media companies will continue to ignore the dangers of deliberately skewed reporting until it's too late.
And holding back info until their book is published…Just unreal.
We’re now in the ‘beyond parody’ stages of our culture…😟
A further problem with the initial BLS numbers of late is that person signing off on them is a leftover Trump appointee who, like a good (or is that every?) Republican, puts party before nation.
The Liberally Biased Mainstream Media™ so badly want to see Republicans back in power, because the GOP's evil incompetence is very profitable for them. They were at their absolute worst during the 2016 Presidential campaign where they sought to destroy Hillary Clinton while elevating Drumpf and his incompetent brand of corruption. and the end results speak for themselves!😠😡🤬
Democracy Dies In Clickbaits!
I have no idea why Biden's "approval" numbers would be strangely and unreasonably low. Complete mystery.
Ps. Yes. Folks understandably resent paying off loans for all. Not a good look for the Dems.
I keep returning to the internet meme of “You have one job...” whenever we turn to the subject of why our Failed Press ™ cannot seem to find it in themselves to issue corrections to their shoddy reporting, especially in the business pages.
We know economics is not a science as much as the business reporters claim it to be, and the market is never rational. It’s all a crap shoot and so these reporters expertise is suspect at best.
If the reporters cannot admit that they consistently got it wrong month after month when this is supposed to be their expertise, well, why would readers trust them ever again? Pundits are extremely bad at their jobs. If you or I had this kind of track record at work, we would be escorted to the door with a roadmap and a cheese sandwich.
Who exactly creates these expectations? I tend to think of expectations as worthless things, or simply disappointments under construction
Srsly - seems to fall into the ‘people are saying’… category. Are they/we REALLY (mostly) saying /thinking that? Some of those statements are pretty big claims :/
From one Eric to another,
Have you been following the problems involving the CDC's guidelines on handling the current Covid-19 surge due to the Omicron variant?
Left-leaning critics have been accusing the agency of kowtowing to corporate America & Republicans, particularly in the case of the reduction of the quarantine time from ten to five days.
Anyway, they're also accusing the Biden administration of being just as bad as the Trump administration in handling the surge of Covid-19 cases because the government won't call for lockdowns, tell people to stay at home, and provide financial assistance for individuals and small businesses.
Basically, they're saying they won't vote for the Democrats in the 2022 midterms because the party supposedly doesn't care about the people they claim to serve, and are willing to let them die in the name of captialism.
The pessimism goes so far to the point they don't believe the Democrats can protect democracy, because they haven't been able to pass the Votings Rights Act into law, and because the Justice Department hasn't gone after the bigger fish involved in planning and inciting the January 6th insurrection.
P.S. Do you follow the Left-leaning seastersjones Instagram account? They've been very pessimistic lately with their posts (particularly those of Bree Newsome Bass).
Haven’t seen many folks arguing Biden has spent the last yr not caring abt Covid.
I have seen and heard a lot of criticism of Biden’s handling of the pandemic by the media. Morning Joe has been screaming about him not having had enough tests ready for this new variant — the variant that is so much more contagious and has taken health officials by surprise not only here, but in other countries. Most of those countries are also scrambling to get enough tests.
As if that isn’t enough negative spin today the WaPo has this top article:
“U.S. emissions surged in 2021, putting the nation further off track from its climate targets”
Anyone who has thought about it for a second realizes that this was inevitable given how shut down the economy has been and how few people have been driving. And then there is the fact that the GDP is better than it was even before the pandemic when the stable genius was in office. That additional production also increases energy consumption.
In contrast I have seen a lot of reminders by the media that the jump in jobs comes from an unnaturally low pandemic level so it’s not as big a deal as it looks.
It really feels like the media is trying to destroy Biden, while simultaneously obsessing about the dire threat Republicans pose to our democracy.
Excellent points. I stopped watching Morning Joe back in the spring when he and Willy wouldn't stop whining about having to still wear a mask when they'd been vaccinated for months (I wasn't able to be vaxxed yet in my state at that point!). They kept hammering on the CDC. As to the jobs reports, yep, I've seen stories that Biden hasn't "added" any jobs—we're just getting back the ones lost at the beginning of the pandemic; "there is NO new job growth" so not big deal. Ugh.
It really does feel like they want to destroy Joe and his administration—and anyone on the side of reason. Glenn Kessler dedicated a whole fact checker column to Sonya Sotomayor, excoriating her for being off on her numbers about children impacted by Covid during the oral arguments on vaxx mandates—and giving Gorsuch a complete pass and even dismissing his wildly wrong statement.
I don't think the media is obsessing enough about the threat the GOP poses; they are gleefully tuned into the politics of the midterms and a Congress run by Kevin McCarthy and Jordan (my stomach heaved writing that).
The CCCP wants the Republicans to get Congress back. They can't wait for them to impeach Joe and Kamala on "stealing the election". Oh and don't forget they will endlessly grill Hunter over his laptop...
The Beltway buffoons want the conflict-filled drama of a Republican-controlled Congress because the Biden administration is "boring" and the "Dems in Disarray" narrative isn't enough to get eyeballs and clicks.
They don't want a functioning government, they want a reality show to cover while somehow ignoring the terrible legislation that the Republicans want to introduce.
In case anyone doubts that the media really does get bored by serious politicians here is a quote from that august “Dean of Washington Journalism”, the late David Broder about Gore’s acceptance speech:
"But, my, how he went on about what he wants to do as president," wrote Broder. "I almost nodded off."
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/10/gore200710
Not a good look for Glenn Kessler for ignoring Gorsuch's wrong statement.
Wasn't he the resident fact-checker in the Washington Post who went after every lie uttered by the Trump administration?
This is so typical. Kessler also nit picked Hillary to death. A good example of bias on the part of fact-checkers is Politifact claiming the Lie of the Year in 2011 was Democrats saying that Republicans had voted to end Medicare when they voted for Paul Ryan’s proposal to privatize Medicare and replace it with vouchers. Readers voted the Republican blatantly false claim that Obama’s stimulus didn’t create any jobs as the biggest lie of that year. The estimate by experts was that it had actually added 2.5 million jobs.
https://www.mediamatters.org/politifact/politifacts-flawed-lie-year-selection-only-encourages-more-lying
Politifact lost me for good with "you can keep your health care plan if you like it" as lie of the year. Still cleaning brains off the wall from that head exploder.
But it's typical for Mr. Pinocchio to give passes to Republicans!
I wish those Ohio State wrestlers would bring a civil suit against Jordan. At the very least the media should stop ignoring it. They didn’t do that with Joe Paterno whose reputation was ruined because he ignored what Jerry Sandusky was doing.
They were happy to excoriate and old man who couldn't conceive of such monstrosity happening within his own ranks and by a person he'd long considered a friend. Yet they ignore the accusations against both Jordan and Madison Cawthorn. The Cawthorn accusations happened at the same time as Andrew Cuomo, yet crickets.
They saw Cuomo as more of a threat I guess../
And then it comes out that ol' Ron DeSadist let a million test kits expire in Florida...and the Corporate Controlled Conservative Press plays that down...
The media are trying to have their cake, and eat it too.
They're aware of the threat to democracy coming from the Republicans, but are too wielded to their "Biden is next Carter" narrative to realize they're part of the problem.
The progressives have been threatening not to vote for months now. They are incensed that Biden hasn’t forgiven every penny of their school loan debt, and that he didn’t throw Trump in jail. They yammer on social media that Biden has done “nothing.” Schumer and Warren do themselves no favors by harping on cancelling school loan debt too.
Most infuriating is saying Biden is the same as Trump on Covid. It is incredibly frustrating. I am no fan of Rachel Walensky, the head of the CDC, but it is the media who is causing confusion over guidelines. I love when they accuse her of bad messaging because they were the same ones who bent over backward to tell us what Trump “meant to say.” Media is also demanding Biden call teachers an essential service and force them to keep schools open no matter what, because they are tired of the pandemic, tired of their kids, and have declared it over. The Atlantic, with few exceptions (Ed Yong), has been especially bad along with David Leonhardt of the Times. There was a whiny piece in Atlantic by a woman who claimed to be a staunch Dem but now thinks the parties are the same because of, you guessed it, school closings from Covid. Of course her kids are 5 and 3, the oldest is in kindergarten. It was just another crap take, along with always emphasizing the vaxx refusers (700 let go) when more than 99% (like 80K) of a company’s employees complied.
Journalists are doing a crap job, know we know they are doing a crap job, and just don’t care. They twist the criticism, accusing us of not wanting them to report “honestly” about our side.
I wonder where this ‘Every-Problem-Has-To-Be-Solved-By-The-Midterms-Or-Else’ mentality came from…(maybe it’s always been present in US politics to a degree)… But these are NOT normal times. Some issues are global. We are fighting big problems on multiple fronts (and some are just ginned up!) Are you telling me that JOE B. is acting in bad faith? Just embarrassing and childish:/ It takes time to get up to speed. This is a management project of 330M - come ON. Tired of the (short) fruit-fly memory syndrome - which does NOT benefit the people who are working at bettering things, btw…
Duh. What pandemic? It’s as though msm has long ago forgotten the conditions under which the world is living. So, they ignore it and report out with NO context vis a vis the historical hardships all of us are experiencing, as though everything is back to normal and so they report w/in that past norm, not the present one. But the testing…..
They refuse to believe that actual change takes time (like an in-depth airtight criminal investigation) and are "tired" of hearing that when they see a viral tweet campaign have an impact—like getting someone fired—in a matter of hours or days.
Nice column from Wapo EJ Dionne y’day re: your point about DOJ investigation being too slow;
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/09/garlands-caution-is-an-asset-when-it-comes-holding-trump-accountable/
Fanning the existing flames of impatience + running out the clock strategy… blatantly obvious. 😞
A viral tweet campaign is very different from actual legislation.
I'm sure they're aware of the realities, but somehow chose to ignore it because of the misguided belief the legislative process is a sprint, but in reality it's a long marathon.
I don't think they understand how govt—or even a corporation for that matter—actually works.
They're not paid to understand how government works. They have a different agenda.
Indeed
Canceling school loan debt is not a winning issue. There are too many voters who paid for their own education as well as the education of their children. No one went into school loan debt with their eyes closed.
Completely agree. There are things I would totally go along with to ease their debt load, but just outright cancelling is nuts—almost but not quite as insane as NYC City Council voting to allow undocumented citizens to vote.
Oh, don't you know "their 18-year-old brains were undeveloped so they really didn't know what they were doing when they signed the loan agreement"? That was an actual excuse used by someone on Twitter.
And let's not forget that Biden has cancelled billions of college loan debt. However, he's done it for the most deserving. He's helped those that were disabled, and unable to pay back due to that disability, and he's worked to help those that were the victims of predatory lending, especially for those for-profit colleges. The Biden administration is also working to make the loan forgiveness programs easier to take advantage of.
Tired of that narrative - read probably the same story of some voters now switching to independent simply because their legitimate college loans were not wiped clean.
And the "why is Trump not in jail yet" are driving me nuts. As if you can just easily throw the ex-president in jail. Despise Trump as much as anyone, but people should have some type of understanding, or maybe maturity, to realize how difficult that is to do, and rightfully so.
Seeing SBannon running his podcast is kinda perplexing…🤔
Well, Charlie, I think they kinda held their breath and knowingly closed their eyes to the high debt they have incurred and must repay. My 2 very middle class grandsons are in debt to the tune of $100k each with no choice other than to forego a college degree they cannot afford for a job that doesn’t pay well w/o a college degree. Imo, eliminating college debt for those students who need some relief is fair. In 1979 I incurred a $5k college debt to the feds and paid it off w/ monthly payments over 10 years. Manageable for me. Ages ago for sure, but for some students today, tuition, other expenses are very high, too high. Somethings gotta give. Means testing maybe?
There are myriad reasons why college costs are so high and lots of blame to go around (from state GOP govt slashing funding to state schools) to students demanding four-star hotel-like facilities to schools paying Deans like CEOs and CFOs in the private sector to the federal govt, led by the GOP, cancelling govt student loan programs and refusing to limit interest rates.
But no one held a gun to your grandsons' heads forcing them to go into debt for six figures each, unless they are doctors or lawyers (we can have a whole discussion about that, I'm all for loan forgiveness if they are willing to work in underserved areas across the country for a set number of years).
We did everything in our power to talk my stepdaughter out of going to an expensive private school where she carried a large amount of debt. But you know what? She worked her butt off babysitting (it's obscene how much you can make doing that today), working tons of odd jobs wherever she could (she also had a full time job with a low salary), cutting costs where possible, and spending little money. She paid her debt off—it was her sole focus in the five years after she graduated. So should we pay her back that 70 grand she paid off while cancelling your grandsons' debts? For the average voter who didn't go to college and whose kids aren't going to college—which is still the majority of Americans—this is a no win issue.
A college degree shouldn't be prohibitively expensive—especially when schools rake in billions for air time rights to sports—but personal responsibility comes into this too.
You got my personal back up. One is a teacher in Roxbury, MA where most of Boston’s poorest folks live. Lord knows he did not attend a top notch Ivy League or otherwise school. The other is in a state college. Of course guns were not held to their heads but there is a reality to the financial challenges they face as they make their way into the world as productive citizens. Nuance and real world experiences are important to understanding what is at stake as I’m sure you know. For sure their debts will be paid, but at the expense of other goals eg home buying, families being pushed way down the road. Not wanting anyone other than those kids to pay for their own education as I did, but it is an outrageous climb.
I do get it and I feel for them, I really do. And yes, add teachers to the exemption. Most definitely DO NOT get paid what they are worth. I'm not saying, tough luck (though it probably comes off this way). I think there are myriad things the govt can do to help, from capping interest rates and forgiveness on that interest, to changing bankruptcy laws, to expanding programs like TeachAmerica, the old Americorps, and creating new ones for doctors, lawyers, artists, etc. like we did during the Depression.
I get it about home ownership and all that. I never had children or owned a home (before the past few years and only by a family death) because I couldn't afford to have them—I just didn't make that kind of money because of where I lived, the industry I worked in, my particular job, and coming from a poor family.
But those were all choices that I made. It's not fair, of course it's not fair and it shouldn't be this way. But that is the hard reality of our lives—so much for "a new day in America." Reagan ushered a new age all right, but not the one most (clueless) voters expected.
I want your grandsons to get relief, but wiping all the debt away isn't the answer. People already resent/hate the college educated; this will enrage them even more.
Ps. Like your stepdaughter these kids also worked their asses off to get where they are. I think we’re agreeing!
It seems the progressives seem to forget that a Republican-controlled House, Senate & White House means their agenda will completely be lost while the GOP dismantles democracy as we know it.
It annoys me that they seem to forget the inherent messiness in democracy that they claim to uphold. I'm sure they know the legislative process is a hard-fought and often long drawn battle that may involve making compromises. However, their own impatience, and tendency to set overly high standards gets in the way of the nitty-gritty reality.
Yes to every word. Too many forget that it took the GOP decades to achieve dominance. The Powell Memo was written in 1971 (https://law2.wlu.edu/deptimages/Powell%20Archives/PowellMemorandumTypescript.pdf) They want change NOW NOW NOW and if they don't get exactly what they want immediately, than the system is broken and all Dems (with few exceptions) are really just GOP.
That's been a problem that I have noticed with the American progressive movement for years.
I'm guessing the younger members of the Dems Progressive Caucus don't like the narrative of incremental change because it requires them to put a lot of effort to convince their much older moderate colleagues to vote for more progressive policies.
It's not even them. They've been very good partners with the moderates and the president, with a few exceptions. It's all those voters out there who call themselves left or believe in left policies but refuse to join any party (and then think they deserve to vote in primaries to choose who the party rep will be!). We need a modern version of schoolhouse rock on TickTok, Instagram, and Twitter. Maybe that will get through.
Thanks for the clarification that it's the left or left-leaning voters that are the problem here.
They don't realize that removing themselves from the political process just because it's not going their way is counterproductive since it means the voters who identify with the right or are right-leaning can have a greater say compared to them.
They should be worried about that because it means their agenda will go up in smoke and the GOP agenda of a white, straight & Christian agenda will either lead to concentration camps &/or mass genocide.
They don't care if Democrats win or not. In fact, they want Democrats to lose badly so that they can try and takeover the Democratic Party. That would definitely be the end of America were that to happen!
Yup. The Justice "Democrats" stated that on their web site and on Twitter but they've since scrubbed the site and deleted the tweets. A few people on Twitter kept the screen shots so they have the receipts.
Right…alternatives????
Just got the CJR newsletter and the lead comment is about "The messaging mess among Biden's top health officials." It gives a bit of criticism to journalists because "there is a danger of conflating the CDC's communication of its guidance and the wisdom of the guidance itself." But then it ends with "Such stories bear on communication, but are ultimately about much more than that. There are many ways to shoot yourself in the foot." So no matter if it's journalists confusing the public. it's still Biden's fault.
There is no hope.
Ugh, how did journalists lose their sense of self-reflection?
It seems many of them are too focused on writing stories with the facts distorted to suit a narrative that guarantees eyeballs and clicks on their employer's websites, and an easy payday for them.
It's disappointing how corporatization has affected America's newsrooms that the truth has been sacrificed for the financial bottom line.
This has been going on for decades, long before the corporatization of newsrooms caused by those buyouts. Just look at the way the media has covered for GHW Bush’s years of lying about his involvement in Iran Contra, repeatedly claiming to have been “out of the loop”. His pardons of all his co-conspirators kept Bush’s own diary of all those meeting he hadn’t attended from being presented as evidence at Caspar Weinberger’s trial. Bush had even withheld that diary from investigators, only turning it over after they had found out he had kept one.
The media showed much more sustained outrage about Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich — a pardon that top Israeli officials had begged him to issue — than they have showed over Bush’s pardons. The Iran Contra Independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh, a lifelong Republican, publicly accused Bush of completing the coverup with his pardons but when Bush died there was almost no mention of that blatant obstruction of justice. The media knows that, unlike the Monica Lewinsky lie, Iran Contra was a blatantly unconstitutional conspiracy by Reagan and his top people.
Thanks for the context. It's frustrating that the Beltway media establishment have been covering up Republican wrongdoing while always attacking Democrats for every infraction, minor or imagined.
Top epidemiologist I follow has more of a problem with the FDA than the CDC (though inexplicably, there is some outdated mask info on the CDC site - of all places).
The UK and other countries are wrestling with the same issues as we are. No one wants to shut down their economies again. The media needs to stop pretending there is are magic solutions to our problems that Biden could solve with magical powers if he wanted to.
There are definitely concerns about CDC and FDA. CDC takes all the heat.
*I do feel the CDC head should have made that last announcement with team members on the dais (optics).
Too many on "The Left" are also actively trying to sabotage the Biden Administration.
The same perverse logic works in reverse, as any reader here will know. Somehow those expectations are always exceeded or downplayed in some way or another.