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"Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours."

Perhaps the above Ronald Reagan quote is a good example of why the Mainstream Media is so gloomy about the economy.

If you're employed by the MSM, job cuts and downsizing is not only a fact of life, there's no end in sight for the members of the Media Pampered Class. It's easy to see why the MSM talking heads are so obsessed with any bad economic news: if arrogance and conservative-bashing are no longer enough to ensure one's continued employment in the MSM, then the economy MUST be in shambles.

Red Planet Cartoons has a good point in their latest, "Hoping for Recession". The Mainstreamers reported unemployment of 5.4% during the Bill Clinton re-election campaign as the attainment of Nirvana.

Now, with unemployment just having reached 5.1%, their reporting is anything but subtle: it's the end of the U.S. economic world.

John Hindraker of Powerline asks a question that everyone (outside the DNC and the MSM itself) already knows the answer to: "Still, it makes you wonder: is the current hysterical treatment of economic news the product of a rational evaluation of the data, or is it just one more sign of the media’s desire to put a Democrat in the White House in 2009?

Do you remember 1996, when Bill Clinton swept to an easy re-election victory over Bob Dole, on the basis of what pretty much everyone in the press considered a near-perfect economy? No “pink slip nation” in 1996!

Actually, though, the unemployment rate in November 1996, when Clinton rode a soaring economy to victory, was 5.4%. That’s right–three tenths of a percent higher than the “grim picture” of a “pink slip nation” painted by this month’s unemployment report.

Of course, that's one component to the Mainstream's OC economic reporting behavior. The other one is that many reporters are mistaking the economic condition of the Mainstream Media for the economy as a whole.

NO wonder they're so gloomy: more MSM job cuts mean the number of
unemployed MSM hack reporters will continue to swell.

As we said a month ago in Mainstream Media--New Cutbacks in Jobs, Bureaus, Stock Prices, Advertising, Ratings: "The MSM tries to put the blame for their decline on the medium and hopes to counter it by creating blogs on the Internet. One suspects that they won't be selling anything different on their MSM blogs--and the public won't be doing any buying of their news there, either."

Some MSM reporters are deeply partisan, Democrat Party-oriented publicity hacks masquerading as objective reporters of the news. But not all of them.

And while the U.S. economy does have some problems--as all economies do--readers who only get their news from the Mainstream Media would be completely misinformed as to the state of the economic union.

The non-stop beating of the Mainstream Media bad economic news drums offers proof that the few non-partisan MSM reporters were either asleep during Econ 101 or substituting their own personal economic worries for the U.S. economy.

If the Mainstream reporters had any economic knowledge, they'd know that when customers (readers and viewers) aren't buying what a business is selling, that business has to change or go under. The MSM seems determined not to change: that leaves only one alternative.

Or, as Ronald Reagan might have put it, "The depression has reached the Mainstream Media."

by Mondoreb

[Red Planet Cartoons has a nice collection of links and other sources on this MSM obsession with recession and the strangely partisan definition they use of "bad economic news", depending on who's in the White House. "Hoping for Recession"]

Sources:
* Pink Slip Nation
* Hoping for Recession
* Mainstream Media's Recession Obsession
* Mainstream Media Cuts: Jobs, Bureaus, Stock Prices, Advertising, Ratings


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by Mondoreb

Time for a True Confession Story: The Bobby Calvan Assclown Show, as told by Little Green Footballs:

An almost unbelievable example of media arrogance, as a reporter for the Sacramento Bee complains about an ID check at the Green Zone, belittles the soldier for not knowing who “Knight Ridder” is, then brags about his bravery at his blog: Simply Simpatico | The GALLIVANT.

When attempting to access this linked post, now one gets a 404 "Not Found" message. So apparently, the whole deal's off. Fortunately, the forces of history have prevailed at LGF.

Since the little weasel has edited his post to remove some of his creepy comments after being mercilessly criticized by commenters, here’s the original; compare to what you now see at the link above:

An excerpt from the LGF post:

That’s when trouble started.

At the first check point, a pair of Ugandan soldiers asked for identification. We showed our military-issued badges. Unbeknownst to us, we were supposed to be carrying an additional form of ID.

He asked for a passport. I told him I didn’t have it on me. (The advice is to lock up your passport once in Baghdad and never take it out until departing.) He asked for another form of ID, and I replied that I didn’t have anything else.

The American soldier assigned by the U.S. military to oversee this particular checkpoint came over to investigate the problem.

He asked if I had a driver’s license on me. I told him I didn’t have one. He looked incredulous. Why would I need a driver’s license in Baghdad; I wouldn’t be driving, I told him.

He took offense at my response.

Then he looked at the second ID of my companion. It was a badge issued by our newspaper. He said it wouldn’t do. Besides, he asked, what is Knight Ridder?

“I never heard of it,” he said. He probably would have never heard of McClatchy, either. (We use Knight Ridder because it already had a bureau in Baghdad before the chain was bought by the McClatchy Co.)

I explained that it’s one of the largest newspaper companies in the United States. It owns the Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee, the Kansas City Star.

“I know the Miami Herald, he said. I used to live there. But I never heard of Knight Ridder.” He began to chuckle, pronouncing the company as Knight Rider. Perhaps his chuckles stemmed from memories of the 1980s television show “Night Rider.” He then seemed to mock us.

LGF then has this update: "Calvan hasn’t just removed one post — he pulled down his whole site! And it’s no surprise, because what it reveals about the “reporting” he’s been doing from Iraq confirms everyone’s worst suspicions about media corruption."

For a political class as smug, self-assured and all-knowing as the Fourth Estate, they do seem to have an uncanny aim for their feet while shooting these days. Bobby Calvan thought "Lima was beautiful in the spring".

Bet about now he's thinking Baghdad in October sucks.

NOTE: For the complete low-down, from the blog that broke this whole thing open (along with a blow-by-blow of the aftermath that will be familiar to anyone who chugs along with a blog of their own), go see the Doc.

Doc Weasel that is. Office hours at: Doc Weasel.

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