The Business and Media Institute has released a report detailing the media’s constant negative spin on the economy.

* Reports Negatively Charged: More than twice as many stories and briefs focused on negative aspects of the economy (62 percent) compared to good news (31 percent). News broadcasts dwelled on one prospective cataclysm after another, yet each time the economy continued unfazed.

* Negative Stories Given More Air Time: Bad news was emphasized on all three networks. Negative news appeared in full-length stories twice as often as it appeared in shorter, brief items. Good news was relegated to briefs. More good news appeared in brief form than as full-length stories.

* Man-on-the-Street Interviews Spin Stories: Reporters used ordinary people to underscore negative stories by roughly a 3-to-1 ratio over positive. Since these are interviews chosen entirely by the reporter, this shows particular bias. NBC was especially bad at this, featuring negative accounts six times as often as positive ones.

* Worst Network: More than 80 percent of the full-length stories on the ?CBS Evening News? delivered a negative view of the economy ? easily the worst of the three broadcast news programs. The network hid the good news of jobs or economic growth in short items. More than 56 percent of CBS?s brief stories were positive.

* Best Network: ABC was hardly the ?best? anything for its economic coverage. It simply wasn?t as negative as either NBC or CBS. More than 56 percent of ABC reports were negative compared to slightly more than 36 percent positive.

Nothing particularly surprising here, but it’s good to see such blatant media disinformation documented for prosperity.

 Print This Post