Oops. Good Morning America on Friday preemptively announced "expected" job creation for the month of March totaling 190,000. In reality, 88,000 [1] jobs were created. The ABC morning show was only off by 102,000 jobs. At 7:10am, about 75 minutes before the release of the actual numbers, reporter Linzie Janis insited, "The government's jobs report is out this morning. It's expected to show that 190,000 jobs were created last month." The accompanying graphic included the number and a tiny asterisk, presumably representing the tentative nature of the numbers. [MP3 audio here [2].]
This is a monthly practice on the ABC morning show. The anchors will announce the hypothetical, possible results and then cover the real result later in the day on the network. Janis allowed that the new report might not be great. She added, "Why the slowdown? Well, those $85 billion in government spending cuts." Just a month ago, however, GMA's Bianna Golodryga lamented the fact that investors were shrugging off the sequester.
On March 5 [3], responding to a lack of investor panic, Golodryga complained, "Yeah, isn't that kind of sad? It was basically anticipated that we were going to have these spending cuts." She added, "You're not seeing a huge effect on the economy."
On March 11 [4], George Stephanopoulos admitted that the President's spin on the economy wasn't working: "The outside game at least in the short term wasn't working for the President. It was trying to raise all these alarms about the sequester but it didn't seem to be taking hold because people haven't felt it yet."
Good Morning America has eliminated the 8:30 news brief in order to make more time for frivolous segments about Dancing With the Stars and other celebrity-related topics. Clearly, there was no time to offer an update on the actual unemployment rate.
A transcript of the April 5 segment is below:
7:11 ET
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: And government spending cuts may be starting to take a toll on the job market. New data suggests fewer companies are hiring. ABC's Linzie Janis is here with more on that. Good morning, linzie.
[3]
LINZIE JANIS: Good morning, Bianna. The government's jobs report is out this morning. It's expected to show that 190,000 jobs were created last month, that would not be enough to put a dent in the unemployment rate which stands at 7.7 percent. Now, economists say the pace of hiring is slowing down from the 236,000 jobs created back in February. Why the slowdown? Well, those $85 billion in government spending cuts. They took effect on March 1st. A lot of companies waiting to see just how much of an impact they'll have on the economy in the weeks ahead. Uncertainty as you know, Bianna, never good for the jobs market.
GOLODRYGA: That's right and today's jobs report could have an impact on the stock market as well. Thank you.
-- Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here [5] to follow him on Twitter.