Why doesn't the president and the Republican Party also talk about
the economy? It's just right there in front of them, CNNs Andy
Serwer asked University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato
on the April 29 In the Money. The economy is doing pretty darn
well. There's job growth, GDP growth. Yet they just don't seem to be
able to get a handle on that.
Yet CNN, and Serwer in particular have frequently
painted the economy in a pessimistic light during President Bushs
tenure in office.
For the second day in a row the stock market took a
drop,
CNNs Miles OBrien
noted on the October 6, 2005, American Morning. And I think its
what do we need, those Whip Inflation Now buttons, maybe. Serwer agreed: Back to the 70s. Turn your thermostat down, get
your cardigans out.
Weeks before Christmas,
Serwer
ladled out coal for his viewers stockings, focusing on recent
layoffs at Ford. The American Morning business brief for Dec. 2,
2005, was for Serwer a litany of bad news, really. Plant closings
and layoffs, declining sales, its sort of adding up to a very
gloomy holiday season.
Serwers pessimism showed up again on the Dec. 8, 2005
American
Morning
as the business contributor warned of how 800,000 jobs might be
lost if the housing market would collapse. Even this was too much
for colleague Carol Costello, who talked him down: maybe its not
so much the bubble is going to burst, but things are just
readjusting to where they should be.
CNNs pessimism goes back even to election season.
None of the media studied did a good job of covering the economy
consistently, the Business & Media Institute found in its October 2004
study One
Economy, Two Spins.
While CNN was the best of the networks studied, with balanced
coverage of the Clinton economy in the summer months of his 1996
reelection campaign, with President Bush, that balance went out the
window. Of the five stories on the economy in a similar time frame
in 2004, only one was positive, the BMI study found.
CNNs Serwer: Bush Isnt Getting Word Out on Hot Economy
May 1st, 2006 2:00 PM
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