MediaWatch: December 1991
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: December 1991
- "Civil Rights"
- NewsBites: News Fools Tonight
- Revolving Door: To Kennedy's Defense
- Reporters Can't Resist Lumping Republicans With Nazis
- Middle Class Mythology
- DoonesBury's Pet Perjurer
- Abortion Manipulation
- NBC's Hatchet Job
- Janet Cooke Award: Philadelphia Inquirer or National Enquirer
Middle Class Mythology
MIDDLE CLASS MYTHOLOGY. Some media outlets continue to insist that the Reagan years were awful for the middle class, despite evidence to the contrary. On the November 20 NBC Nightly News, commentator John Chancellor asserted: "For the last 18 years, the average voter has been mugged by the American economy. People of all races have seen their incomes decline. From 1972 to 1986, the real after-inflation wages of all workers dropped more than 10 percent -- 1972 to 1986 and it's still going on. In the 1980s, the rich got the headlines and the rest of the country got the shaft."
Wrong. After inflation, the Social Security Administration's average wage did not decline 10 percent. In 1989 dollars, earnings in 1972 were $19,923; in 1986, it was $19,587. Wages rose every year from 1982 to 1988, when earnings stood at $20,265.
In a December 1 "Outlook" section article, Washington Post pollster Richard Morin contended: "Economists now report that the boom years of the 1980s were a bust for fully half of all Americans...despite the lingering buzz about those Golden '80s, half of all Americans saw their income erode, not improve, during the past decade."
Wrong. The math is simple: median family income grew throughout the Reagan years. In fact, average family income grew for every segment of wage-earners, which is usually divided in fifths. So how could half of Americans lose in income?
In the November 4 Newsweek, Assistant Managing Editor Rich Thomas noted that "middle-income Americans have actually received a modest increase in their cash pay -- a 1 percent annual rise through the 1980s, after adjusting for the broadest index of inflation, the gross national deflator. Of course, rich Americans have done even better. But any claim that the middle class is doing poorly simply because the rich are doing better is based on jealousy, not facts."
