Wondering why I put the word “REPORTS” in quotation marks? Let me show you.
Here is the headline, sub-heads of this morning\’s front page story on the latest job data:
HIRINGIS STRONG
ANDJOBLESS RATE
DECLINESTO 6.1%
AGAIN OF 288,000 JOBS
Fivemonths of Steady
Growth as Business
Confidence Rises
Terrific news. Very impressive.
Now, the first two paragraphs:
Americancompanies are finally getting comfortable enough with the economy\’sprospects to add new workers at a very healthy pace, after years ofsaying they lacked the confidence to hire people aggressively duringa fitful recovery.
Employersadded 288,000 jobs in June, the Labor Department said Thursday, thefifth month in a row that hiring has topped the 200,000 mark. Theunemployment rate dipped to 6.1 percent last month, the best readingsince September 2008, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers turnedwhat had been a mild recession into an economic rout.
Wow. We must be doing great! Happy days are here again!
A measure of reality does exist in the article. But only those who read down to the fifth paragraph, where they find this….
Despitethe broad gains, the economy is still a long way from its peak beforethe housing bubble burst and the recession began at the end of 2007.The broadest measure of unemployment, which includes people who areworking part time because full-time positions are not available,stands at 12.1 percent. And the proportion of Americans in the laborforce has been stuck for three straight months at 62.8 percent, a36-year low, and is down sharply from 66 percent in 2008.
….which the Times immediately tries to offset, by starting the next paragraph with:
Butthe recent healthy level of hiring looks more sustainable than it hasin years.
That, folks, is supposed to pass as a hard news story – not a selling message for President Obama, but a neutral presentation of reality. At any rate, that is what the New York Times would have you believe.
Yeah, right. And Noam Chomsky is a member of the John Birch Society.
The one amusing part of this little foray into propaganda posing as news, is the Times\’ inadvertent admission that the 2008 recession was mild in nature, and went off the charts due to the collapse of Lehman Bros. Does that mean that, in the Times\’ view, President Bush was less to blame for the recession than the timing of Lehman Bros.\’ demise?
Just asking….
