Presidential elections have been won or lost due to the economy. Herbert Hoover lost to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan. This election season is no different as polls, including a recent one from NBC News/Wall Street Journal, continue to show the economy is the top concern of voters.
But the network news media often skew economic coverage in favor of liberal candidates and against conservatives. In September 2012, President Barack Obama continued to face a barrage of poor economic news including a GDP downgrade to 1.3 percent, an unemployment rate still above 8 percent and “record” high gas prices. But media coverage of economic issues from that month did not accurately reflect that turmoil. When President George W. Bush sought re-election in 2004, during the exact same time period, broadcast coverage criticized him on the economy despite a GDP of 3.3 percent, an unemployment rate of just 5.4 percent and gas prices a low $1.82.
The Media Research Center’s Business and Media Institute compared ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news coverage for the entire month of September in 2004 and 2012, just as re-election campaigns were shifting into high gear. BMI analyzed the news stories and briefs that mentioned the economy or one of seven major economic issues, ranging from employment to gas prices. Here is what BMI found:
- Bush Blamed More than Twice as Often as Obama for Economy: In 2004, President Bush was blamed in more than 14 percent of stories (21 out of 143) for something including his “record on jobs” and the “huge” deficit. But in 2012, President Obama was criticized for current economic problems in just 6 percent of the stories (15 out of 249).
- Gas 99% Higher, Oil 84% Higher in 2012, Covered 3 Times More in 2004: When oil rose to a record price of roughly $50 a barrel in September 2004, NBC warned it “could put the president’s reelection hopes into a skid” and be a drag on the overall economy. At that time gas prices were under $2 a gallon. In 2012, the networks said little about the $92-a-barrel oil prices. But they did report on “record” high gas prices around $3.83 a gallon, often predicting “relief is in sight.”
- iPhone to
Rescue Obama Economy? The growth or
decline of the Gross Domestic Product was barely mentioned in 2004 or 2012, but
in 2012 the networks fixated on a claim that sales of the iPhone 5 could
“boost”
The Business and Media Institute offers a series of recommendations for the media in an effort to help journalists provide more balanced reporting on the economy, especially during a heated election season. Those recommendations include:
- Don't Spin the Economy: Reporters
should be embarrassed over their glee at the prospect of iPhone sales boosting
- Be Consistent: If 5.4 percent unemployment was bad for Bush, shouldn’t 8.1 percent unemployment have been an even bigger problem facing Obama? Economic data should be treated consistently regardless of who is president. If the number discredits a Republican administration, it should also discredit a Democrat.
- Mention
Economic Data More Often and Make it Relatable: One of the sad facts about network coverage of
economics is how little there is of it. In both time periods, there was little
coverage of
In 1992, then-candidate Bill Clinton completely altered the momentum of the presidential race by pushing a theme saying: “It’s the economy, stupid.” The U.S. economy remains front and center in the presidential race 20 years later.
But how the news media cover that economy can have enormous impact on the election. When President George W. Bush ran for reelection in 2004, the economy was once again a major media focus. Bush was skewered by the press over jobs as the voting neared, despite a 5.4 percent unemployment rate. Over and over again, the economy was mentioned negatively in regards to Bush – often by saying it was what his opponent, Sen. John Kerry, should campaign on.
When Bush triumphed, he did so despite the media coverage.
Eight years later, that has changed. President Barack Obama oversees a far worse economy than Bush did. Even Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press wrote that “Economic growth has never been weaker in a postwar recovery.” Unemployment stood at 8.1 percent in September, close to 3 percent higher than it had been under Bush at the exact same point in his term.
Yet the broadcast networks haven’t told that story. News outlets that hammered Bush for economic conditions in 2004 seldom called Obama on far worse results in 2012.
President Bush was criticized for years by the news media on economic issues. High gas prices and “record high” oil prices formed the basis for some of the attacks. But jobs were another major focus. The unemployment rate had risen to 6.3 percent in 2003, but dropped by to just 5.4 percent by September 2004.
By contrast, the Obama economy has received far less criticism in network reports. The lead up to the election was marred by high unemployment, low workforce participation, record debt and gas and oil prices nearly double the Bush numbers. Yet President Obama received many free passes in coverage.
In September 2004, the economy was humming along
quite well compared to the same month eight years later. In fact, September
2004 outperformed September 2012 in a dozen key economic measures. (SEE CHART)
In September 2004, the national unemployment rate stood at 5.4 percent; it was announced that 144,000 jobs had been added in the prior month; the economy was expected to grow at 3.3 percent for the second quarter, and gasoline cost just $1.92-a-gallon. Even the $7.4 trillion federal debt, which people on both sides of the aisle criticized Bush seems almost quaint by comparison to today.
Now consider the very same month in 2012. Obama presided over 8.1 percent unemployment, only 96,000 jobs were added in August. (The October jobs report revised that total, but that came after the study period.), Gasoline hit records for Labor Day weekend at $3.83-a-gallon, almost exactly 100 percent higher than it had been eight years earlier.
By a dozen economic measures, things are much worse now. Yet Bush was blamed more than twice as often for economic woes – in more than 14 percent of economic stories, compared to just 6 percent for Obama.
CBS chief national correspondent Byron Pitts, found a man on the street who blamed Bush for his troubles on Sept. 15, 2004. Pitts said, “Over the last four years, Mr. Jolliffie’s worked longer hours for less money. He blames President George W. Bush, but he’s still not sold on Senator John Kerry.” Pitts also made Kerry’s argument for him, mentioning Bush’s “highest deficit in history” and the “most job losses of any administration in the last 72 years.”
Liberal politicians also blasted Bush on news programs. Former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean slammed the president for “half-trillion dollar deficits” in a Sept. 27, 2004, “Today” interview.
But in 2012, there was little indictment from politicians or reporters about Obama’s $1-trillion per year budget deficits. In fact, on Sept. 6, “Good Morning America” allowed White House senior adviser David Plouffe to claim the Obama administration had “cut over $3 trillion in spending, more than what was called for in the Bowles-Simpson plan.”
Interviewer George Stephanopoulos, formerly of the Clinton administration himself, didn’t mention that the federal debt was then $16.1 trillion, or that that the president got zero Senate votes in favor of his 2012 budget. Not just zero Republican votes. No Democrats voted for his budget either.
The networks even let President Obama himself slam his political opponents Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan on the deficit issue, without pointing out his big spending ways.
There was also a stark contrast when it came to the media coverage of jobs. Bush was attacked on the topic eight years ago, while Obama rarely was – in spite of the fact that there were 4.5 million more unemployed during the 2012 time period.
NBC’s “Today” found a young voter on Sept. 28, 2004, who condemned the President Bush over the issue. “I really think Bush has ruined the economy. We’ve lost so many jobs, and I haven’t seen him do anything to really fix it,” the voter said. Never mind that the Bush economy had already weathered a spike in unemployment stemming from the 9/11 attacks and the dotcom collapse Bush inherited from President Clinton.
The young voter’s criticism was the same Bush’s political opponent had been using earlier that month. As CBS’s Pitts said on Sept. 3, 2004, “today [Sen. John] Kerry slammed the president’s record on jobs.” Kerry said, “I think that doing nothing, when millions of Americans are losing their jobs over four years and doing nothing, makes you unfit to lead this nation.” “Evening News” report didn’t include any defenders of the president or his record, nor did Pitts push back against the attack.
The media even helped Kerry try to link Bush to President Herbert Hoover. ABC’s Betsy Stark said on Sept. 23, 2004, “one [campaign claim] seems to resonate above the rest.” Which one? Kerry’s claim that “All 11 presidents, from Herbert Hoover on, created jobs in America, except George W. Bush.” Stark went on to tell viewers that there were 900,000 fewer jobs than when Bush took office, although she did remind people of the recession and war that followed 9/11 “put a deep chill on hiring.”
FactCheck.org had debunked the Hoover comparison long before Stark’s report, saying “In fact, the economy lost a smaller percentage of jobs in the Bush downturn than in seven of the ten previous downturns going back to 1945 when the federal government began keeping the statistics on total non-farm employment.” Media Bush/Hoover comparisons were part of the spin mentioned in the MRC’s list of Ten Worst Media Distortions of Campaign 2004.
But in September 2012, job issues were covered very differently. In fact, NBC’s “Today” optimistically reported on Sept. 20, that “New census data shows the U.S. economy may be on the road to recovery. Figures from 2011 show more young Americans are now moving out of their parents’ homes to go to college or to hit the job market.” Although Natalie Morales mentioned that the unemployment rate remained “elevated” she did not mention the actual rate of 8.1% or the president.
One of the rare instances of blame for Obama came from MSNBC’s sometime conservative Joe Scarborough, while he was busy criticizing Romney’s campaign on NBCs “Today.” Scarborough complained that conservatives “can’t believe that Mitt Romney is blowing a race against a president who they believe has mismanaged the economy terribly over the past four years, has spent us $5 trillion deeper into debt, has run $1 trillion deficits per year. ... Unemployment is still 8 percent! Plus the economy is still in tatters.”
Even an Associated Press analysis of recoveries following the last 10 U.S. recessions concluded the 2012 recovery has been the worst. AP’s Paul Wiseman wrote, “Economic growth has never been weaker in a postwar recovery. Consumer spending has never been so slack. Only once has job growth been slower.” But you would hardly know that from the network stories mentioning economics in the month of September.
Gas and oil prices impact everyone, and “records” are sure to grab headlines. So it was no surprise that in 2004 and 2012 the price of fuel made news. But much lower ‘04 “record” oil and gas prices made the network news more than 3 times more often than 2012 records for gasoline (22 percent of stories compared to 6.8 percent).
Hurricanes helped drive oil prices to $48.86 by the last week of September 2004. (it had been higher during the month, but BMI compared Energy Information Administration data for the final week of each month.) The networks pointed to it as a re-election threat, pain for everyone in the economy, and noted that relief wasn’t coming “anytime soon.” Gas prices in that same month closed around $1.92-a-gallon.
It was NBC’s Matt Lauer who reported crude oil’s surge to more than $50 a barrel. Even though Bush had little to do with the surge, Lauer said it “could put the president’s re-election hopes into a skid,” on “Today” Sept. 29. The same morning, his colleague Anne Thompson declared that “experts don’t think we’ll see any kind of relief any time soon.”
The night before, ABC’s Betsy Stark even mentioned the “r” word in her “World News Tonight” report on soaring oil. After interviewing oil analyst Phil Flynn, Stark said “Fifty-dollar oil is not expected to push the economy, as a whole, into a recession. But it is causing plenty of pain for truckers, airlines, and anybody on a budget who drives.”
“[T]he days of $15 and $20 a barrel oil are probably gone forever,” Stark concluded gloomily.
Since 2004, gas and oil prices have nearly doubled, and by September 2012 it was gasoline prices that were setting records after a sustained national average of $3 or higher since Dec. 23, 2010. In the last week of September 2012, a barrel of crude oil cost $92.89 and an average gallon of gas $3.83. Yet, network reporters in 2012 routinely found reasons to be optimistic on gas prices, saying relief was on the way.
The broadcast networks certainly had a glass half empty outlook in 2004, but by September 2012 news outlets were finding the glass half-full. Repeatedly especially on ABC, it was only a matter of time until prices dropped.
Journalists put on a positive spin as gasoline prices set records for the time of year on Labor Day weekend, Gas prices typically drop during the fall due to the switch to winter blends, so that change should have been notable. Instead, ABC’s Diane Sawyer said “relief is in sight and soon” on Sept. 4. Gasoline cost $3.84 a gallon that day, but correspondent Alex Perez optimistically noted prices that “our experts predict by thanksgiving, average gas prices will drop to about $3.25 or $3.50 a gallon, a big improvement.”
Just a few days earlier, on Sept. 1, “Good Morning America” looked forward to a potential 20-cent a gallon price drop by October. Stories on NBC, in spite of the “sticker shock,” had also predicted prices would come down, between “Thanksgiving and Christmas,” conveniently after the election.
The 2012 stories ignored Obama’s anti-oil and gas policies. In fact they didn’t mention the president at all. Nor did they remind people that gas prices were much lower when he took office in January 2009, or that gas prices have been above $3-a-gallon since December 2010.
The broadcast networks were so desperate for good news to talk about in 2012, all three of them reported a claim that the iPhone 5 was expected to sell so well it would could increase the nation’s Gross Domestic Product. Reports varied, predicting an increase between .3 percent and 1 percent.
All six stories mentioning GDP on NBC in the study window were about the iPhone 5. In one of those NBC reports, they found an expert who was predicting a far larger boost to GDP than the other networks. “Today” quoted Gene Munster, a digital media technology analyst, on Sept. 13. Munster claimed the “huge” sales “could add close to one percent to our overall GDP.”
On Sept. 22, “This Morning” CBS’s Michelle Miller announced that Apple stock had gone up with the release of the iPhone 5 saying, “That’s good news for the company, perhaps even better news for the nation’s economy.” She turned to CNET’s executive editor Roger Cheng who declared, “The iPhone 5 can actually bump the GDP by half a percentage point, which is incredible. No other single product has moved the needle of GDP.”
ABC’s Neal Karlinsky told “Good Morning America” viewers “sales are so mind-bogglingly huge, JP Morgan’s chief economist predicts the iPhone 5 could actually boost the nation’s gross domestic product” on Sept. 13.
All together, the networks aired 9 pieces about the Apple product’s sales boosting GDP in September 2012, and every one of those failed to mention the current rate of economic growth. That was 3 times as many stories as the networks did about the growth forecast being downgraded to a pathetic 1.3 percent. (There was one additional story mentioning GDP, in which President Clinton mentioned how much GDP had shrank before Obama took office).
ABC, CBS and NBC continued to have trouble with consistency when it came to debt and deficits. Sound reasoning would suggest that if a $400 billion deficit was a “huge” problem in 2004, then $1-trillion deficits would be a similar or greater threat in 2012. And the sky high $16.1 trillion debt of 2012 should be a bigger problem now than the $7.1 trillion debt of 2004.
That was not the case.
Eight years ago, Bush’s deficits were indicted by reporters and politicians. In 2012, a few stories included political criticism of the massive debts incurred by Obama, but he was often allowed to deflect or shift blame on the subject. Networks repeatedly included Democratic attacks on the GOP on the issue.
On Sept. 14, 2004, “Today,” Katie Couric warned viewers that discussing the deficit could be nauseating. “This morning, taxes and the deficit. You might want to grab an air sickness bag for this one,” she said. Couric said the “sky-high budget deficit” was the “most dangerous storm” facing the economy, according to some economists.
ABC took a theatrical approach. “Good Morning America” invited the inappropriate puppets from the lefty play “Avenue Q” to hold a mock Bush/Kerry debate. Most of the mockery was directed at Bush, from the puppet that was pretending to be him.
“Well, hey America, I’ve got big plans for this country. Yeah, if you think you’re excited now, wait ‘til you get me re-elected,” the Bush puppet said. “If I am re-elected, hey, remember that $300 check that I sent everybody back in 2001? Well, if I’m re-elected, I will be the best lame duck president ever. I will up the deficit and I’ll, and I’ll one-up on Oprah and I’ll give everyone SUV’s. How’s that? There you go.”
In 2004, reporters called the budget deficit of $422 billion “massive,” “huge” and something the president would have to defend. CBS’s Bob Schieffer even gave Sen. John Kerry some free advice on Sept. 23, saying he’s “got to start talking” about the economy and “what’s ahead if we don’t begin to bring down this deficit.”
But in 2012, CBS’s political director John Dickerson gave Obama a pass on the identical topic, saying “on the question of the [national] debt, I mean, it’s a great question. You know, it’s also not the president’s fault alone that this hasn’t been solved.”
NBC’s Matt Lauer casually noticed that the deficit numbers for Obama were “bad,” but used them to make the Romney campaign look incompetent. Lauer asked Romney campaign adviser Ed Gillespie: “Since the Democratic convention, there’s been a string of bad news on the economy, the jobs numbers, the deficit numbers and yet, while the challenger in this race, Mitt Romney, should be taking advantage of that, by just about every estimate this was a bad week for his campaign, would you agree?”
In other stories, Obama and his Democratic allies actually attacked the GOP on debt and deficit issues. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., even caused a stir on CBS “This Morning” when he defended calling Paul Ryan a “fraud” when it comes to the deficit.
“The sad fact is that U.S. federal debt will soon reach economically damaging levels, and spending will be the driver of that explosion. The three major entitlements – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – will accelerate spending growth in the future due to demographic changes and rising health care costs,” Alison Acosta Fraser, Heritage Foundation’s director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, warned in a June 5 Issue Brief.
The second chart in her brief warned that “unless the U.S. controls spending, America’s debt will surpass those of troubled nations [Greece/Italy/Spain], leading to similar economic woes.”
It’s easy to conclude there was an enormous imbalance of economic coverage from 2004 to 2012. From stories that merely mentioned the word “economy,” to specific economic issues, the networks proved unwilling to hold President Obama to the same scrutiny to which they’d subjected President Bush.
It is clear from September 2004 reports that the networks viewed the economy under Bush to be a big problem for his re-election. Ironically, in 2012, even though journalists noted many times that Mitt Romney would need to campaign on the economy (implicitly saying Obama’s economy was a problem) they often turned those points into criticism of the Romney campaign, rather than a problem for the administration.
In other cases, such as gas and oil records, network reporters spoke pessimistically in 2004, but optimistically in 2012 – when prices were nearly double. ABC, CBS and NBC reports were also wildly inconsistent on issues of debt and deficits.
In an election season marked by repeated allegations of media bias, this difference in economic coverage stands out as tangible proof that journalists do not treat conservatives and liberals the same way.
The MRC’s Business and Media Institute examined Nexis transcripts from ABC, NBC and CBS, morning and evening news programs, from Sept. 1-30, 2004 and Sept. 1-30, 2012. The search was for news reports containing any of the terms: “economy,” “recession,” “gas prices,” “consumer confidence,” “GDP,” “gross domestic product,” “employment,” “debt,” or “deficit.”
Recommendations
The Business and Media Institute offers a series of recommendations for the media in an effort to help journalists provide more balanced reporting on the economy, especially during a heated election season. Those recommendations include:
- Don't Spin the Economy: Reporters
should be embarrassed over their glee at the prospect of iPhone sales boosting
- Be Consistent: If 5.4 percent unemployment was bad for Bush, shouldn’t 8.1 percent unemployment have been an even bigger problem facing Obama? Economic data should be treated consistently regardless of who is president. If the number discredits a Republican administration, it should also discredit a Democrat.
- Mention
Economic Data More Often and Make it Relatable: One of the sad facts about network coverage of
economics is how little there is of it. In both time periods, there was little
coverage of