Eric Boehlert: When good news for Biden is no news for the press [View all]

[babylonsister]

https://pressrun.media/p/why-is-good-news-for-biden-constantly

When good news for Biden is no news for the press
Networks ignore jobs report
Eric Boehlert
1 hr ago


Friday’s job numbers released by the Department of Labor were shockingly good. Easily beating analysts’ expectations, the U.S. economy posted 943,000 new positions in the month of July, as the unemployment rate fell to 5.4%, delivering one of the strongest reports of the last decade. It was welcome news not only for President Joe Biden, since presidents are routinely graded on the strength of the job market, but for the U.S. economy as it tries to free itself from the year-and-a-half constraints of the pandemic.

Friday’s red-hot accounting also went off like a firecracker on Wall Street, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average soaring to new heights, setting its 44th record-high close of 2021. That benefits 60 million Americans who participate in 401K accounts and whose retirement funds balloon every time the Dow soars.

So, the fantastic jobs news and record-setting Dow climb were treated as a huge deal by the press, right? Recall that back in May, when a disappointing jobs report badly missed expectations, the press hovered over the story for days, suggesting Biden faced an economic crisis, while Republican critics condemned his handling of the economy. So to be fair and to be consistent, the media ought to have treated the July numbers just as intensely as it did the May findings, right?

Turns out lots of news outlets weren’t that interested in the breakthrough job news. As has become custom, good news under Biden is often treated as no news by the press, which is for more enthusiastic pushing Biden “crisis” stories. (Remember this April headline from Politico? "How Good News Could Complicate the Biden Agenda”)

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The press has been slightly obsessed with that economic narrative all year. Eagerly echoing complaints from Republicans and the business community that workers had become lazy because of the federal assistance paid out during the pandemic, news outlets have hammered that point and been portraying it was bad news for Biden. Worse, the coverage often only focused on the viewpoint of business owners, not on employees.

But when there was great news for workers — and for Biden — in the form of nearly one million new jobs posted in July, the press was far less interested.

For the record, some news organizations got the story right. Late Friday afternoon, the New York Times’ jobs report update was still prominently displayed as the second headline on the paper’s homepage. And at the Wall Street Journal, its jobs story was the top headline all day long.

Proving once again that good journalism isn’t really that hard.