By Erick-Woods Erickson
I do not wish physical violence on the reporters of America, but without some metaphorical financial and ratings violence on the industry, they will not fix themselves. As a whole, the industry has become an irredeemably self-absorbed, narcissistic class convinced of special privileges. There are plenty of great reporters and journalists, some of whom I have great friendships with. The industry as a whole is increasingly in shambles — shambles of its own creation. The average J-school grad is doing his level best to embrace Donald Trump’s “enemy of the people” label.
Look no further than this great piece of reporting from Bloomberg about the cost of living. It was all the rage yesterday. Before I get to my point, just read this part of it:
It now requires $119.27 to buy the same goods and services a family could afford with $100 before the pandemic. Since early 2020, prices have risen about as much as they had in the full 10 years preceding the health emergency.
It’s hard to find an area of a household budget that’s been spared: Groceries are up 25% since January 2020. Same with electricity. Used-car prices have climbed 35%, auto insurance 33% and rents roughly 20%.
Those figures help explain why Americans continue to register strong dissatisfaction with the economy: Consumers’ daily routines have largely returned to their pre-pandemic normal, but the cost of living has not.
And the government data reports that show easing inflation are cold comfort, because they simply indicate prices are growing at a slower pace, not that they are returning to early 2020 levels.
At the same time, housing affordability is at its worst on record, auto-loan rates have soared, and borrowing with a credit card has never been so expensive.
The report goes on to acknowledge that nominal wage growth from 2020 is at 20%, but when considering inflation, real wage growth is only 0.6%.
I have lost count of the number of stories from media institutions telling us the economy is actually really great as they attempt to understand why voters feel like it is not.
Every major news organization except Fox News has done multiple stories on how great the economy is. The terrorist supporting Washington Post literally blamed social media on people’s perceptions of the economy. They did that this weekend.
For over a year, Americans have been telling any reporter who would listen that gas, groceries, rent, utilities — everything was more expensive now than before Biden got elected. And during the same period, reporters from every major news outlet have found experts to insist that it is not really true, inflation is falling, wages are rising, etc. With a decrease in inflation, these same reporters have acts as though prices are coming down, as opposed to accurately noting prices are still increasing, just not as fast.
The press, as an industry,has spent more time dismissing the voters and consumers and Middle Class of America while lamenting they should be thankful for what a great economy Joe Biden has given them.
The reporters who have challenged the narrative have absolutely been in the minority.
Let’s not forget all the fawning coverage over the Green New Deal and reporters and media institutions not even batting an eyelash over the cost of gas or the insistence that people just go out and buy new battery powered cars, new stoves, new refrigerators, new heat pumps, etc. with tax credits to be returned at a future date.
The most ridiculous part of the whole Bloomberg story is that it had to be written at all, now, after all these months for reporters across America to suddenly realize that maybe, just maybe, the people of the country actually haven’t been duped into hating Joe Biden’s economy by Fox News and conservatives online and on the air.
Real wage growth has amounted to only a 0.6% increase since 2020 thanks to inflation. And as the Bloomberg story notes, “[T]he government data reports that show easing inflation are cold comfort, because they simply indicate prices are growing at a slower pace, not that they are returning to early 2020 levels.”
It is just remarkable how many stories have been written and broadcast trying to tell consumers that they’re really fine instead of accepting these same consumers’ real world, lived experience that, yes, the rent is too damn high and so are the groceries.
How many journalistic institutions must die through consumer rejection of their product before the survivors realize humping progressive party lines is not worth it? My guess? They’ll never learn and just convert to non-profits funded by progressive billionaires. It is, after all, where the terrorist supporting Washington Post is already headed.
Speaking of the terrorist supporting Washington Post, they ran this in an actual news article. I posted it on Twitter and people thought it must be an opinion piece. Nope, this is how the Hamas propaganda arm of Washington reports news.
Adding to the sensitivity, the unwavering embrace of Israel that many staffers find upsetting stems in large part from Biden’s personal lifelong attachment to the Jewish state, aides said. Biden often cites his 1973 meeting with Prime Minister Golda Meir as a seminal event that crystallized his view of Israel as critical for Jewish survival.
At the time, Israel was 25 years old, a left-leaning nation and a military underdog, struggling to find its way in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Now Israel is a military powerhouse led by a far-right coalition, and the Biden administration has become identified with a military campaign that has killed more than 13,000 Palestinians, displaced hundreds of thousands of others, created a humanitarian disaster and damaged America’s moral authority in much of the world.
That is, objectively, editorializing.
It presumes that because Israel’s position in the world has changed, Biden’s position on it should change. It labels a multi-party coalition as “far right.” It states objectively the Hamas propaganda number of 13,000 without noting the number comes from a terrorist group. It blames Israel, not Hamas, for the current situation that did not exist until Hamas’s terror attack. And it claims the situation has “damaged America’s moral authority in much of the world” without offering objective evidence.
That is an editorial, but it masquerades as an objective news story in a newspaper that apologized for publishing a cartoon critical of Hamas. The Washington Post is controlled by terrorist sympathizers.
