The Media Say the Economy Is Horrible, So It Must Be True

by Herman Cain

     I’ve been telling people around the country for months that they  must think all of us are stupid. Usually, someone will come up and ask me about the mysterious “they.” It’s a simple answer – they are any political party, politician or member of the news media who underestimate the American public.

     Political parties are supposed to take sides and be partisans. That’s the system. The news media are another story – or at least they should be. But their coverage of the Bush economy reads like a collection of Democratic Party press releases, calling a strong economy everything from “struggling” to “volatile” or “dicey.” In a brand-new analysis of that news coverage, nearly two thirds of all economic stories were negative. And the numbers only get worse from there.

     Digging deeper, it’s easy to see how many of the “positive” stories really were undermined by negative news. Strong employment stories were filled with the media’s party line – oil or gasoline price hikes, layoffs and fears about the housing boom. Economic growth was usually mentioned briefly, while negative stories received much more air time.

     Recently, reporters have been saying President Bush isn’t getting any benefit from the good economy. The Aug. 7 Washington Post explained that Bush was trying to “stir up enthusiasm about the economy – an issue where his poll numbers are low despite encouraging signs about jobs and the pace of economic growth.”

     As TV’s Gomer Pyle used to say, “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!” The media barely conceal their glee when they report falling poll numbers for the president. The real story is why Americans view the economy as bad or worse when the opposite is true. Twenty-six straight months of positive job creation. More than 3.5 million new jobs. An unemployment rate of just 5.0 percent. Strong economic growth and low inflation. No matter which network you watch that message is buried.

     The Media Research Center’s Free Market Project took a hard look at how the broadcast networks have covered the economy during Bush’s second term. The three evening news shows on ABC, CBS and NBC filled their broadcasts with what looked like promos for the Disney movie “Chicken Little” instead of economic news.
In the detailed analysis, you’ll find 62 percent of the news stories were negative. What’s more, nearly half of the positive economic stories were undermined by negative news. Negative stories receiving the same treatment made up less than 13 percent of the total.

     While none of the newscasters said the sky was falling, they did their best to pretend. When Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan came out and said the economy was strong, CBS did man on the street interviews to pretend the opposite was true. On May 3, ABC’s Betsy Stark predicted the new job numbers would be out soon and the only question was how bad a hit the economy would take. When those numbers came in higher than predicted, nobody at ABC seemed to recall the network’s cloudy crystal ball.

     I wish that was all. It’s not. You could write a book just on how poor the coverage has been of the alleged “housing bubble.” The media have been foretelling a massive bust in housing prices for months now. On May 19, ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas said: “The run up in housing prices is now beginning to look something like the boom in Internet stocks, and we know what happened there.” That kind of ignorance makes homeowners fear that their most expensive possession could turn worthless overnight.

     That won’t happen. No matter how much the media compared Bush to Herbert Hoover last year, this is not the Great Depression. Now they’ve given up on that failed comparison, but their coverage of the president has gotten worse.

     Look at how Ron Insana from NBC “Nightly News” interviewed President Bush on April 18: “It’s been five years since we hit the all-time highs for the Dow Jones industrial average or the Nasdaq. Someone joked earlier that, you know, the bad news is the stock market is going down. The good news is that my Social Security money isn’t in there.”

     When I saw that, I was almost speechless. It’s amazing our family TV survives one week of that kind of slanted coverage without “someone” throwing it out the window. But throwing it out isn’t the answer. Only viewers can bring pressure to bear to end this economic spin cycle. Until we all demand more accurate coverage, the media will continue to think that we are stupid.

* * *

     This is the first issue of a brand new weekly newsletter, The Balance Sheet. It is produced by the Media Research Center’s Free Market Project (FMP) with the goal of improving understanding of our free enterprise system. The easiest way to improve that understanding is to help those who report on America’s most important system – its free market system.

     I’m honored to serve as National Chairman for FMP because it combines economic education with a platform to hold the media accountable for the way they report business and economic news. This isn’t an attempt to simply bash the media. We all make mistakes. This is a way to help correct those errors and even prevent them before they can occur.

     Sometimes, as the analysis in this issue shows, the problems are too profound to tolerate. That’s when the Free Market Project will hold the media to account and demand improvement – more complete coverage, less slanted reporting.

     The Free Market Project is there to assist. It is designed to help journalists and businesspeople embrace the benefits of the free enterprise system.

     On a personal note, I ask you to share this e-mail with your friends, co-workers and family. By signing up, every new subscriber gains access to a Special Report describing in detail problems of poor business reporting, as well as offering solutions for improved coverage.

     I urge you to sign up if you have not yet done so.

     You will be happy that you did.


# # #
Herman Cain is the former president and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, Inc. and currently is Chief Executive Officer and President of T.H.E. New Voice, Inc., a business and leadership consulting company. He is the National Chairman of the Free Market Project.