via Washington Post: Opinion A perpetually surprised media isn’t doing its job
This week, I examine what’s wrong with economic news coverage, pick the pol of the week and share something different — a reminder from history.
What caught my eye
“U.S. Economy Shows Surprising Vigor in First Half of 2023” a Wall Street Journal headline proclaimed this past week. On Axios, one read: “The economy’s latest upside surprise.” Yahoo Finance intoned, “Surprisingly Strong US Economic Data Keeps Recession Fears at Bay.”
You might find it remarkable that outlets touting their economic foresightedness and keen analysis could be continually surprised about the economy’s strength after 29 consecutive months of job growth, inflation steadily declining, durable goods having been up for three consecutive months, 35,000 new infrastructure projects, an extended period in which real wages exceeded inflation and outsize gains for lower wage-earners. It’s as though outlets are so invested in the narrative of failure and imminent recession that reams of positive data have had little impact on their “narrative.”
The most sanguine headline came from Fortune: “Economists scrambling to justify their recession predictions … but maybe they were just wrong.” Conversely, maybe the administration was right in its approach to building the economy “from the bottom up and the middle out” despite the histrionics from Republicans, hand-wringing from the media and negative opinion polling.
Part of the problem might be the media’s preference for political horse-race coverage over events on the ground. “What do voters think?” (about what? about the media’s own negative spin on the economy?) replaces “What is going on?”
We have seen far too little coverage of the economic transformation in little towns, rural areas and aging metro centers brought about by new investment in plants, infrastructure projects and green energy related to the Chips Act. It sure would be nice to know what’s happening in the heartland when a new chip manufacturing plant creates thousands of jobs or when a new bridge creates scores of construction jobs and then cuts commute times. So intent on hyping the politics of what the administration is doing, the mainstream media too frequently neglects coverage of what President Biden’s initiative are accomplishing.
When the media consistently gets the big stories wrong or fails to cover major economic changes, one would hope they’d look back to explain why their coverage diverged from reality and do a better job of covering actual developments rather than GOP talking points, process stories (how Biden is “selling” his plan) and polling. Unfortunately, waiting for the mainstream media to engage in self-reflection (e.g., maybe it overdid the “But her emails” in 2016; maybe there was no red wave in 2022), let alone self-correction, might be a waste of time.
If outlets are concerned about low trust in the media, explaining a historic economic transformation might help inform voters and leave the media less “surprised” when the data comes back. Instead, they are invariably on to the next groupthink exercise, the next round of gloom-and-doom and the next batch of credulous coverage of Republican talking points.