CBS, NBC Mention Job Revisions, Ignored Bigger Gains During Bush Years
Two
of the broadcast networks conveniently noted upward revisions to past
months job gains on Feb. 1st, as the January jobs report was released.
ABC didn’t mention that day’s jobs report at all that night.
The
evening news shows on NBC and CBS reported the 157,000 job increase as
well as the uptick in unemployment to 7.9 percent. But both the
“Evening News” and “Nightly News” also mentioned the positive revisions
to past months, something the same networks ignored during the Bush
years.
The
January jobs report showed 422,000 more jobs had been created in the
last two months of 2012 that previously announced. CBS “Evening News”
anchor Scott Pelley was very upbeat about the jobs report, noting that
the stock market “was giving a big thumbs up” to the jobs report. “While
unemployment did tick up a tenth of a point to 7.9 percent, a separate
survey of employers shows that they added 157,000 new jobs.”
He
introduced Anthony Mason’s economic report which mentioned the
revisions and noted they pushed average monthly job growth in 2012 up to
181,000 a month.
NBC
“Nightly News” acknowledged that the jobs numbers were less than hoped
for, but correspondent Tom Costello said that while “the unemployment
rate edged up to 7.9 percent in January, we also learned that more jobs
were added in 2012 than first reported.” He didn’t specify the revised
numbers, but added that “fear of a financial crisis is lessening.”
But
in 2006, all three broadcast networks ignored a much larger
year-over-year revision of 810,000 jobs under the Bush administration in
2006. At that time, unemployment was also dramatically lower than it is
today. In October of that year,
the employment report was full of positive news: unemployment down to
4.6 percent; 51,000 new jobs created in September; job creation
revisions of 60,000 more for August and 10,000 more for July and the
piece de resistance: 810,000 more new jobs from March 2005 to March
2006. But the networks barely mentioned any of that, and none reported on the huge revision to the previous year’s numbers.
“Nightly
News” on Oct. 6, 2006, devoted just three sentences to the department’s
report. Anchor Brian Williams said, “While the U.S. job market grew by
only 51,000 jobs across the whole country last month, the previous two
months were revised upward, and the employment rate did tick down a
notch to 4.6 percent.” Williams also warned that the numbers that year
were “below expectations.”
