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Tag: cbs evening news
President Joe Biden

When Good News For Biden Is No News For Beltway Media

Reprinted with permission from Press Run

Friday's job numbers released by the Department of Labor were shockingly good. Easily beating analysts' expectations, the U.S. economy posted 943,000 new positions in the month of July, as the unemployment rate fell to 5.4 percent delivering one of the strongest reports of the last decade. It was welcome news not only for President Joe Biden, since presidents are routinely graded on the strength of the job market, but for the U.S. economy as it tries to free itself from the year-and-a-half constraints of the pandemic.

Friday's red-hot accounting also went off like a firecracker on Wall Street, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average soaring to new heights, setting its 44th record-high close of 2021. That benefits 60 million Americans who participate in 401K accounts and whose retirement funds balloon every time the Dow soars.

So, the fantastic jobs news and record-setting Dow climb were treated as a huge deal by the press, right? Recall that back in May, when a disappointing jobs report badly missed expectations, the press hovered over the story for days, suggesting Biden faced an economic crisis, while Republican critics condemned his handling of the economy. So to be fair and to be consistent, the media ought to have treated the July numbers just as intensely as it did the May findings, right?

Turns out lots of news outlets weren't that interested in the breakthrough job news. As has become custom, good news under Biden is often treated as no news by the press, which is far more enthusiastic pushing Biden "crisis" stories. (Remember this April headline from Politico? "How Good News Could Complicate the Biden Agenda")

Three days before the sterling jobs report, CNN's Chris Cillizza announced Biden was suffering through "the worst week of his presidency." What was the evidence of that? In part, Cillizza pointed to the fact that Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina had tested positive for Covid.

Wait, what? Addicted to the Dems in Disarray storyline, journalists have trouble properly focusing on good news for Democrats, like last week's economic home run.

For the blockbuster jobs report, lots of news sites greeted the development with a shrug. At 4 p.m. on Friday, roughly seven hours after the job numbers were released, the story was highlighted in the 37th headline as you scrolled down the NBC News homepage, and ran behind such pressing reports as "Scientists Unveil Extinct Ice Age Lion Cubs Pulled From Russian Permafrost," and "What to Buy in August and What Can Wait."

Truly stunning fact: Friday's "NBC Nightly News" did not mention the jobs report.

At the CBS News homepage on Friday afternoon, none of the top 50 headlines at that time addressed the jackpot economic report. CBS News did find space of this headline, though: "How to Watch Team USA Men's Basketball Compete For Gold Medal."

Another stunning fact: Friday's "CBS Evening News" did not mention the jobs report.

Online at ABC News, the jobs report was shut out in the afternoon, making room for stories about a Buffalo stopping traffic at Yellowstone National Park, the US women's volleyball Olympic victory, and a movie review of "Green Knight."

When readers clicked on the "U.S." section at ABC News' homepage, none of the top 13 headlines listed were about jobs. If they scrolled down further, at the bottom right corner they'd finally catch a glimpse of the headline for a video report, "Biden Touts Jobs Report Numbers, But Says There Is More Work Left to be Done."

To its credit, Friday's "ABC World News Tonight" did mention the jobs report, but not until the end of the broadcast.

The Washington Post slotted the blockbuster workplace numbers as its 11th most important headline on its website, behind an article about Sen. Joe Manchin's houseboat.

At CNN? By Friday afternoon the jobs report had been blacked out, as the network's homepage made way for "This Underrated Form of Exercise is So Good for You," and "Lucy Lawless Reunites With 'Xena' Costar."

Visiting the "CNN Biz" homepage, readers did find "The US Added 943,000 Jobs, The Biggest Gain Since August 2020." But that was immediately followed by a pessimistic reported headlined, "The Big Picture On Jobs is Still Grim." There, CNN stressed that employers were still struggling to find workers, thanks in part to the runaway jobs market.

The press has been slightly obsessed with that economic narrative all year. Eagerly echoing complaints from Republicans and the business community that workers had become lazy because of the federal assistance paid out during the pandemic, news outlets have hammered that point and been portraying it was bad news for Biden. Worse, the coverage often only focused on the viewpoint of business owners, not on employees.

But when there was great news for workers — and for Biden — in the form of nearly one million new jobs posted in July, the press was far less interested.

For the record, some news organizations got the story right. Late Friday afternoon, the New York Times' jobs report update was still prominently displayed as the second headline on the paper's homepage. And at the Wall Street Journal, its jobs story was the top headline all day long.

Proving once again that good journalism isn't really that hard.

Liberals Find Community — And That Could Be Big

Liberals Find Community — And That Could Be Big

During the presidential campaign, many Hillary Clinton voters in Atlanta’s suburbs thought they were alone. That was an easy conclusion to draw because few felt comfortable putting Clinton signs on their front lawns or expressing their political preference at parties. Their neighbors seemed overwhelmingly Republican.

It took the presidency of Donald Trump to shock them out of their quietude. They emerged from the bunkers, blinking and surprised to find they had so much company. Many are now harnessing their distress to their newly discovered numbers and going activist. They are thus giving a 30-year-old novice named Jon Ossoff a fighting chance to win the congressional seat recently vacated by Republican Tom Price, Trump’s secretary of health.

This wouldn’t be happening without Trump. Today’s scenes of environmental degradation and Russian infiltration — under the tweeting fingers of a possibly mad emperor — would wake the political dead. They have electrified a left prone to battling itself over deviations in liberal scripture but also a center wanting nothing more than a day of normal news.

In other times, #resistance might come off as a bit melodramatic. Trump world has made it feel downright mainstream.

Trump has thus transformed the liberal ranks from stray cats to packs of dogs. Dogs act bolder when traveling in numbers. Dogs want community.

Participants in the women’s marches in January recall the events not so much for stoking anger but for providing comfort. The throngs of peaceful marchers overwhelmed the few radicals ready to rumble. Their sense of well-being came from communing with so many ordinary women — and men — who felt as they did.

Like the Tea Party right, liberals are flocking to their own media campfires for warmth, talking points, and calls to action. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow is now edging out the troubled king of right-wing palaver, Bill O’Reilly, in total audience. (She has long dominated him in the coveted 25- to 54-year-old demographic.)

On CBS, Stephen Colbert has become the go-to guy for smart and witty late-night commentary from a liberal perspective. As such, he is bringing younger audiences back to network TV.

And in a shoutout to “CBS Evening News,” let us praise anchor Scott Pelley. His willingness to tell what’s really happening with minimal dramatics and apparently little concern about being attacked by the right is refreshing.

The surprise hit podcast of 2017 — “Pod Save America” — stars three luminaries from the Obama administration. It offers lively and interesting political chat — but nothing that would have seemed earth-shattering before Nov. 8. Now it’s vacuuming up audiences and advertising.

Speaking of which, it was interesting to see how quickly major advertisers deserted O’Reilly’s show after reports of the host’s penchant for serial sexual harassment. In doing so, they must have considered the perils of displeasing his avid fan base. On the other hand, how many millions of women were marching?

The Tea Party’s membership was never huge in numbers, but the movement knew how to turn communal passions into political clout. Members jeered politicians and joined enthusiastic protests. But their real power came from marching as a group to party primaries and other elections that less engaged voters ignored.

Democrats hope to use that strategy in the special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. Ossoff is currently running against several Republicans. Should he get more than 50 percent of the vote, he’d take a storied seat once inhabited by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Political revolutions don’t happen on Twitter. They happen when like-minded citizens join to vote.

As jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron famously vocalized, “The revolution will not be televised…The revolution will be live.”