The New York Times finally confronts one of the most insidious forms of bias in the major news media today-(reg req'd)- the shockingly flawed reporting of economic statistics. Basic economics-along with science and math- is one of the most neglected areas of education today. This has led to shameful ignorance of all of these subjects on the part of most Americans-thus they take their lead from the stories they read in the press (who unfortunately, as journalism and english majors, also shunned anything to do with numbers as they were educated). So you have a case of a land of the blind where the one-eyed man truly is king.
Two economists at the American Enterprise Institute (a conservative think-tank) studied the way that economic statistics, such as unemployment, economic growth, durable goods orders, etc. are reported in the media. They found a statistically significant bias against republican presidents in the reporting of economic news.
One example that the NYT uses is that during the Clinton administration unemployment averaged 5.2%, only 0.3% lower than it has averaged during the Bush administration-yet the headlines were 44% positive for Clinton, yet only 23% of Bush's were.
What really interests me about this article though, is that they quote a former professor of mine as their economics expert.
“Christopher D. Carroll, an economist at Johns Hopkins University who served on Mr. Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, said the paper by Mr. Hassett and Mr. Lott was "the first serious statistical attempt to look at the question that I've seen."”
They go on further to quote Prof. Carroll- and he bashes the survey. Of course, beyond saying that he served on Clinton's CEA they do not disclose any of Prof. Carroll's other affiliations (a note, the council of economic advisers is generally apolitical, arch-liberal Paul Krugman served on Reagan's CEA). Chris Carroll worked for the Al Gore campaign, doing analyses of the voting results during the Florida recount! The NYT does not disclose Prof. Carroll's liberalism, even though they go to pains to describe the AEI researchers as “right-wing hacks”
So basically, the point is that biased economic reporting probably does more damage than your typical left-leaning major news coverage. This is because poor coverage of news events is more easily identified than poor coverage of more esoteric economic news (I am assuming that the pathetic state of math and science education in our country has a lot to do with this).