Investors Business Daily Rips Coverage of Economy

Choice excerpts from November 22’s read-the-whole-thing editorial “Why Can’t Media See Propserity?“:

No matter how well the economy is doing, it seems, the media manage to find something wrong. We wonder whether this is simple economic ignorance or some other agenda playing itself out.

We’ve been thinking a lot about this lately as we watch jobs, incomes and the stock market keep rising, while inflation — a real fear, given recent oil price hikes — remains tame.

And yet the media can’t seem to focus on all that’s going right with the economy right now — which is an awful lot.

….. They all commit the same sin. We think back to the classic of this genre: the 1992 award-winning series by Don Bartlett and James Steele: “America: What Went Wrong?” It was about the 1980s Reagan era, one of the most economically successful decades in American history.

The title says it all.

Why is it this way? The fact of the matter is, most newspapers are run by people who are liberal. They do not like Republican politicians. They do not like George W. Bush. They will not admit their bias. It’s that simple.

….. Reporters often argue that, yes, they might be liberal, but they are scrupulously fair when they report.

But let’s just look at the past three years, which have seen a remarkable rebound in the American economy — a rebound that has defied fears that, after the stock market’s collapse in 2000, the economy would be unable to get back on track.

We’ve seen repeated stories — and “series,” obviously intended to win big media prizes — that pooh-pooh our current prosperity.

Here’s the reality. The economy is growing faster, joblessness is lower, inflation is slower now than it has been on average for the past three decades.

….. Yes, we have a bias too. We tend to see things getting better. But then, that’s only backed up by 229 years of American economic history. How about a new series: “America: What Went Right?”

The poor economic reporting of the past year is another reason why the organizations people currently refer to as The Mainstream Media should be renamed the WORMs–Worn-Out Reactionary Media.