Jobs Report Positive; News Reports Negative
NYT and Reuters frame
positive news negatively, while others provide mixed reports or no
report at all.
by Megan
Alvarez
July 8, 2005
The Bureau of Labor Statistics had good news to report on July 8,
2005: unemployment was down from 5.1 percent in May to 5 percent for
June and the economy added 146,000 jobs last month. The last time
the unemployment rate was at 5 percent was in the Bureaus report
for the month of August 2001. Additionally, the Bureau revised its
job growth numbers up for April and May to 292,000 and 104,000,
respectively boosting the two-month count by 44,000 payroll jobs.
Simply put, all this was good news for the economy.
However, Reuters and The New York Times managed to
frame the positive news in a negative way. The Times morning
headline read, June Job Creation Lags Behind Expectations, while
Reuters called the job growth tepid.
Both of these articles based their negative reporting
on the fact that economists expected job growth to be around
200,000. However, according to The Dallas Morning News and as
reported in the BMI special report One Economy, Two Spins,
economists predictions are usually on average 40,000 higher than
actual reports and have been since 1999. Also, as was the case with
April and May 2005, numbers are often revised upward in subsequent
months.
In other reports, CNN termed the Bureaus numbers as a
mixed picture on its program, American Morning. CNN reporter Andy
Sewer said of the job growth, That's below what was anticipated,
but then went on to say, The good news is the 5 percent
unemployment rate. That matches the lowest rate we've seen since
September of 2001, right around 9/11, of course. That's good news.
Also good news is the fact that the jobs report raised the number of
jobs created for the month of April and May. So, more jobs added
there, as well.
NBCs Today also provided a mixed report on July 8,
2005. Natalie Morales said, Many analysts expected even more new
jobs, but then added, The unemployment rate is now the lowest it's
been since August 2001.
Despite the unemployment rate falling to its lowest
level since 2001, the two other major networks, CBS and ABC, failed
to mention the Bureaus numbers in their morning shows.
These figures come just after the Conference Board
reported consumer confidence to be at a three-year high on June 28,
2005. As the Business & Media Institutes News Analysis report, Confidence
Game, showed, two of the three major networks were reluctant to
report on the positive consumer confidence numbers. CBS was the only
major network that did report on the number.
These latest reports follow a trend analyzed in One
Economy, Two Spins. The research done in this report showed that
the three major networks, CNN, and the nations major newspapers,
including the Times, are more likely to do negative reports on the
economy when there is a Republican president and positive reports
when there is a Democrat in office.
