SALON

Friday, Nov 2, 2012 2:46 PM UTC

Fox and the new jobs trutherism

Fox News insists that a good jobs report is bad. Of course it does VIDEO

By

Topics: Fox News, Steve Jobs, Media, Jobs report, Election 2012,

Fox and the new jobs trutherism

Forget “cooking the books.” Fox has a found a more direct way to turn news of job growth into a bad thing for President Obama — just insist it’s not true.

Last month, after a strong jobs report showed the unemployment rate dropping below 8 percent, conservatives at Fox and beyond convinced themselves that the Bureau of Labor Statistics was pulling some funny business to boost the president a month before the election. This morning, BLS released its new monthly report, and it’s more good news: The economy added 171,000 jobs in October, almost 50,000 more than economists expected, and the previous two months’ reports were revised upward to the tune of 84,000 additional jobs.

So did the patriots at Fox News let out a whoop that more Americans had found jobs last month? Nope. In the first hour after the report came out, they found every possible way to spin the news as bad for Obama and good for Mitt Romney. When announcing the numbers, the Fox personalities always focused not on the number of new jobs added, but the fact that the unemployment rate ticked up from 7.8 to 7.9 percent, mentioning the 171,000 new jobs almost as an afterthought.

But as Andrew Leonard explains, the fact that the rate ticked up slightly is in all likelihood a positive sign — the number of people seeking jobs jumped upward, suggesting that more people are confident enough now to start looking for work again.

Don’t try telling that to Fox host Martha MacCallum, who rolled out a chart showing that the jobless rate has only gone up and stayed high under Obama, with the 2 percent drop under the president’s four years almost imperceptible. Of course, the chart begins in December 2007, before the economy imploded, when unemployment was at 5 percent, so how could it look otherwise? Next, MacCallum insisted that the unemployment rate everyone is talking about is not the “real unemployment rate.” The “real” rate, she and co-host Bill Hemmer said, is the wider so-called U-6 number, which includes people who have jobs, but only part-time and are looking for full-time employment. That rate is indeed useful, and some economists do think it’s a more accurate measure of joblessness. But it’s not the one that most people look at. On the other hand,  it is a much bigger absolute number, 14.6 percent, thus making it a better story for Fox.

But for the full-bore spin job, MacCallum and Hemmer brought in Stuart Varney, the Fox Business analyst, who explained that today’s numbers paint “a dismal picture of the employment picture in America today.” Then he got right down to what’s really important: “It should play in favor of Governor Romney,” Varney declared of the jobs report.

Remember, this is the same Varney who,  just one month ago, led the jobs-truther charge. “There is widespread mistrust of this report and these numbers,” he told Hemmer and MacCallum back then. “Oh, how convenient that the rate drops below 8 percent for the first time in 43 months five weeks before an election,” he added. Today, however, Varney seems to have none of those same concerns.

So what did actual economists think of the report? Speaking on MSNBC, Mark Zandi, the often-quoted economist who advised John McCain’s presidential campaign, called the jobs report “good, very good.” “When you add it all up it feels really good,” he added. Justin Wolfers, the Wharton economist with a beloved Twitter feed, reacted thusly: “BOOM!” “There are 3 data sources in a jobs report: Payrolls, revisions, household survey. Payrolls good, revisions great, household employment fab,” he explained in more wonky terms. Betsy Stevenson, the former chief economist at the Labor Department, added, “a steady, slow recovery continues.”

But it appears that the GOP presidential nominee is taking his cues from Fox. The report is a “sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill,” Romney said in reaction to the report.

Alex Seitz-Wald

Alex Seitz-Wald is Salon's political reporter. Email him at aseitz-wald@salon.com, and follow him on Twitter @aseitzwald. More Alex Seitz-Wald.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 43 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations