Despite Media Cheerleading, Most Americans Unhappy with Economy
Want more proof of the mainstream media’s fading influence with the public? A new ABC-Yahoo poll finds that a full 85 percent of Americans “are either angry about the economy or at least dissatisfied with it,” according to an ABC News article by Gary Langer. So a vast majority of Americans have been immune to the months of economic happy talk from the media.
What had Langer agog was “the ‘anger’ number.” Twenty-five percent of people surveyed – including 12 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of independents – described themselves as “angry” over the state of the economy. And although 54 percent blame both parties, “35 percent say they're angrier with the Democrats – more than triple the number, 10 percent, who aim their ire at the Republicans.”
Langer also noted that “fewer than 34 percent” said they felt the economy was beginning to recover – down from 45 percent last February.
What’s interesting about these results is that ABC and others have done their best to talk up the economy. Having invested so much in Barack Obama’s election and in shilling for his massive stimulus package, they’ve been desperate to see improvement. They found “bright spots” and “green shoots,” and crowed when the May jobs report, artificially inflated by temporary census workers, showed 431,000 jobs created. Newsweek went so far as to declare the recession over in August 2009.
So it’s no wonder that “the ‘anger’ number” would come as a surprise to ABC. Despite what they and the rest of the establishment media has been pushing, Americans are believing their own eyes.
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