Unemployment

Shortly after the Labor Department announced a very disappointing jump in the unemployment rate to 9.8 percent, Google News featured as its top story an Associated Press article published Thursday predicting "the tight job market may be easing at last." Here's a screen cap of Google News from about an hour ago:

The unemployment rate rose in November, from 9.6 percent up to 9.8 percent after only 39,000 jobs were added to the workforce. On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Mark Haines of CNBC called the data "disappointing." Haines went on to say, "An optimist or a sunny 'glass is half full' kind of person would say the unemployment rate may have ticked up because more people are now looking for work. That'…

A worried George Stephanopoulos on Thursday again pushed for Republicans to accept some sort of Democratic compromise on extending unemployment benefits and the Bush tax cuts. The Good Morning America host even hit a Republican Congressman for his "double standard" on the issue. Stephanopoulos interviewed incoming House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp and Democratic Congressional Campaign…

Good Morning America's Claire Shipman on Thursday tried to disguise a Democratic activist as just a jobless American who would be hurt by Republican failure to extend unemployment benefits. Shipman sympathetically recounted that Edrie Irvine, who she didn't explain spoke at a Nancy Pelosi press conference on Wednesday, "never thought her very livelihood would depend on a political debate in…

In no uncertain terms, Rush Limbaugh (link will become unavailable in seven days) ripped into an Associated Press report today on the alleged perils of allowing unemployment benefits to expire for what the Labor Department says is nearly 2 million unemployed: I have not had one class in economics since high school in the 1960s -- not one -- and I understand more about this through my own self…

In separate reports for the Associated Press during the past week, Christopher Rugaber and Jeannine Aversa, economics writers for the wire service, each dealt with estimates for next year's average unemployment rate. They came back with significantly different predictions for 2011 without recognizing how widely those estimates varied. On Tuesday, Rugaber dealt with the Federal Reserve's…

Ed Schultz on Tuesday falsely accused Fox Business Network contributor Charles Payne of recommending people on unemployment lines eat each other to survive. Such ironically occurred on the "Psycho Talk" segment of the "Ed Show" (videos follow with partial transcripts and commentary):

This is the sixth year I have looked into how the media treats these two topics: The use of "Christmas shopping season" vs. "holiday shopping season," and the frequency of Christmas and holiday layoff references. I have done three sets of simple Google News searches each year -- the first in late November, followed by identical searches roughly two and four weeks later. A graphic containing…

  On Thursday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, after guest Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post predicted that Republican Congressmen would be reluctant to extend unemployment benefits, host Keith Olbermann asserted that, referring to congressional Republicans, "They don't live in this world. They don't live in this country. And I think we'd be better off if they didn't live in this country."…

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday claimed the President's stimulus plan combined with 2008's Troubled Assets Relief Program resulted in ten million jobs being saved. Such was actually said on CBS's "Face the Nation" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Despite 9.6 percent unemployment nationally, with some areas of the country suffering far worse than that, the New York Times editorial board believes state governments must raise taxes to balance their budgets:

Bill Press this weekend said Barack Obama has created more jobs in the past 20 months than George W. Bush did in his entire eight years in office. As readers will see from the actual data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Press's comments made on the "McLaughlin Group" were so false it's laughable (video follows with transcript and commentary):

During her 1PM ET show on MSNBC on Friday, host Andrea Mitchell decried President Obama showing willingness to extend all the Bush tax cuts: "We got the big hint from Robert Gibbs yesterday that that is now on the table as far as the President's concerned. How does extending tax cuts for the very – the wealthy, the millionaires, how does that help the unemployed?" Mitchell directed that…

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the unemployment numbers for October showing “fantastic” gains of 151,000 jobs, according to MSNBC, and an unchanged 9.6 unemployment rate. CNN’s Christine Romans called it a “good report,” during “American Morning” and noted that it was the “first time in a very, very long time” enough jobs had been added in one month to keep up with new entrants…