U.S. economy is fine
The only thing faltering is media objectivity
Jack Kelly is national security writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1476).
In his story March 26 on the likelihood that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice would testify again before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, Adam Nagourney of The New York Times wrote: "With the economy faltering and Democrats so united, Mr. Bush's terrorism credentials are portrayed by his supporters as the strongest assets he had going against Mr. Kerry."
Even if it were true, it would have been of dubious relevance for Nagourney to include the phrase "with the economy faltering" in a story on an unrelated topic. But it isn't true. The Commerce Department reported March 25 that the economy grew at a 4.1 percent rate in the last quarter of 2003. Coupled with the 8.2 percent growth rate for the third quarter of 2003, the economy has experienced its fastest six months of growth since the period January-June 1984.
And the economy should continue to grow at a greater than normal rate. The AP reported that "economic growth in the January to March quarter is expected to clock in at 4.5 percent, some analysts' forecasts say. Growth in the April-to-June quarter should also be around that pace."
"I consider it a booming economy," Timothy Rogers, chief economist for a Boston firm that provides data and analysis for investors, told USA Today. Nearly all the 55 other prominent economists contacted by USA Today had the same view.
Most economic indicators are strong. The unemployment rate (5.6 percent) in January was the same as it was in January 1996, when President Clinton was running for re-election. Journalists described a 5.6 percent rate then as "low," which it is in historical terms.
The "misery index," (the rates of inflation and unemployment added together, a term invented by Jimmy Carter to bash President Ford in the 1976 campaign) is lower than it was in aggregate for Clinton's first term. Home ownership and corporate profits are at record highs.
The economic picture is not without smudges, most notably the sluggish growth in employment as measured by the employers' survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (The household survey, which includes self-employment and gives more weight to small business, indicates employment is at a record high.)
Even the employers' survey is looking up. The Labor Department announced Friday that nonfarm payrolls increased by 308,000 in March, the largest one-month gain since April 2000.
It's reasonable to view the employment situation with concern. But to describe the economy as a whole as "faltering" is to take an unconscionable liberty with the truth.
But taking liberties with the truth is what the "mainstream" media (by this I mean The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the news departments of ABC, NBC and CBS, and -- to a lesser degree -- The Washington Post and the Associated Press) are all about these days. They are functioning less as journalists than as the propaganda arm of the Democratic National Committee.
Democrats and the news media have been talking down the economy for months, and it has had an impact. A survey of consumer confidence March 16 by ABC News and Money magazine indicated it had fallen for the fourth time in five weeks, to a 10-month low. Consumer confidence usually does not decline in the early stages of a boom.
Democrats are fond of saying, and journalists are fond of repeating, that 2 million jobs have been lost since Bush became president, implying that Bush is somehow responsible for this. But the recession was caused by bursting of the dot-com bubble in the spring of 2000 (when Bill Clinton was president), and was deepened by the Sept. 11 attacks. The recovery began shortly after Bush's tax cuts went into effect, a fact which journalists are less fond of pointing out.
It's understandable why Democrats wish to accentuate the negative. But it is the job of journalists to report all pertinent facts, not just those helpful to Democrats. It's time they did it.
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