summer

After three so-called “recovery summers,” the economy has yet to recover under President Barack Obama. Unemployment stands at 7.8 percent, but would be far higher if more people were looking for jobs. GDP was downgraded to 1.3 percent and the national debt is $16 trillion.

Looking back, the broadcast networks have consistently depicted past summers as times of economic renewal, despite an ongoing economic downturn.

Summer 2010 was touted by all three broadcast networks as a “Summer of Recovery” until it became apparent that the economy was not recovering. There was a half-hearted media effort to label the summer of 2011 as a “Summer of Recovery” as well, but that was also abandoned. Facing the reality of a slow recovery, the major networks instead turned to arguing that the recovery would have been much worse without Obama.