Eric Boehlert: When good news for Biden is no news for the press

[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”)

snip//

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.

[spanone]

1. the media is pining for that fucking guy....

cnn pins his face to their website daily

[katmondoo]

2. I lose resect for any cable news hosts when they start to criticize Joe Biden for

doing this or that or for not doing this or that, that is when I turn the channel.

[crickets]

3. K&R for visibility.

[gratuitous]

4. Yes, the media should feature this more prominently

But it wouldn't hurt the Biden administration to blow its own horn from time to time, and furnish the media their headline: "Record job growth follows from Biden plan" or some such.

[EleanorR]

5. Which Biden did 3 days ago

Which brings me to another piece of good news this morning: We learned that the economy created 943,000 new jobs in July — 943,000. And the unemployment rate fell by a half a percent to 5.4 percent.

Now, while our economy is far from complete and while we have — doubtlessly we’ll have ups and downs along the way as we continue to battle the Delta surge of COVID, what is indisputable now is this: The Biden plan is working, the Biden plan produces results, and the Biden plan is moving the country forward.

We’re now the first administration in history to add jobs every single month in our first six months in office, and the only one in history to add more than 4 million jobs during the first six months.

Economic growth is the fastest in 40 years. Jobs are up. The unemployment rate is the lowest since the pandemic hit. Black unemployment is down as well.

Why? Because we put in place the necessary tools early in my presidency — the COVID vaccine — the COVID-19 vaccine plan, the American Rescue Plan — to fight the virus and fight the economic mess we inherited. As a result, we’ve been able to make progress on both fronts against grave challenges. And we have — we put in place the tools to prevent this Delta variant wave of COVID-19 from shutting down our small businesses, our schools, and our society.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/06/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-july-jobs-report/

[gratuitous]

6. Repeat it for the folks in the back

We really need to get over our natural reticence, because we think that once we said something, it's covered. But it isn't. I loathe the former guy, but he kept repeating lies over and over again, and his fans internalized it to such a degree that many of them truly believed that the former guy had kept all his promises.

We have the advantage in that what we're saying about the Biden administration is true. But we can't say it just once and expect people to believe it or adopt it. A whitehouse.gov page is nice, as is the public remarks of President Biden. But if that's the end of it, then that will be the end of it in the news cycle. Because you and I know that tomorrow the Republicans will be harping on the failed economic polices of the Biden administration, even if they can't actually provide proof. And the media will slavishly repeat every syllable from eight different Republicans, big shots and back-benchers alike.