It’s hopefully not a new idea to you that news organizations are prone to present just about any story as “THE MOST SHOCKING, BIGGEST, UNPRECEDENTED, MUST-SEE MUNDANE STORY WE’VE EVER REPORTED!!!!!” Why? They are deathly afraid you will change the channel when they cut to commercial, or walk past the newsstand without buying that paper, or allow your eyes to scan right past the link to their site and never consume the ads they are selling. Yes, IT’S A BUSINESS! They only report news because they so desperately need your eyeballs in order to make a profit selling advertising around their reporting.
This is why, over the last six months, you’ve seen so many headlines in this vein: “Most Americans Ever Unemployed.” What’s wrong with that headline? Just this: The fact is that as a percentage of the workforce, unemployment during the current recession is not as great as it has been even in the last 30-40 years, let alone during the Great Depression (not even close). But instead of stating that in the headline, it will say, “More Americans Out Of Work Than During Great Depression.” Guess what? There are many millions more people in the U.S. today than during the time of the Great Depression, so the fact that there are more Americans unemployed today than there were then is more of a curiosity than an indicator of the severity of the current economic downturn.
Headlines, though, are written to grab attention, not present the facts that are needed to properly place a story in historical context.
The media are not alone in this. Political candidates (or, I should say, candidates who are not incumbents) also work to give the impression that times are unprecedentedly hard during their campaign. While he was running for office, Pres. Obama was absolutely following this predictable playbook. As the media has the same motivation, they were happy to repeat the Obama mantra that this was the worst economy in 50 years. (I seem to recall that Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992 had the exact same “worst economy in 50 years” mantra. The result of focus-group testing of the most effective time comparison, probably.) A candidate who can instill fear in voters and convince them that he or she is the panacea to the scenario which the voters should fear, has a good chance of winning those votes. Obama carried this tactic right into his term in the White House, using constantly-stoked fear of economic collapse as political cover to win passage of the enormous stimulus bill, full of unpopular initiatives which would be very unlikely to be voted into law were they debated on their own merits. This was one of the most cowardly legislative tactics I’ve ever seen.
Kirk Petersen cites data that supports this idea in his blog post today. Give it a read, and be cognizant of such tactics when you are consuming news reporting, whether it be on television, in print, or online.
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