Always beware one of the most dishonest offerings of the mainstream media - the "news analysis." Theoretically this is when a journalist goes more in-depth than usual by explaining the background of an issue - going through its causes and effects and helping you better grasp the drivers behind the mere facts. That is what it's supposed to be. That is not what it usually is.
Usually, it's an opportunity for a liberal reporter who write his opinion under the guise of "analysis," not labeling the piece as opinion so as to give it a certain cachet of trustworthiness. This isn't just this guy's opinion, you're supposed to think. He's a journalist! He's just helping us understand the facts.
Yeah.
No.
Bolshevik.
The Associated Press became especially shameless during the Bush presidency about injecting its editorial opinion into stories not labeled as opinion. This started when Ron Fournier was running the AP's D.C. bureau and he moved it away from just-the-facts reporting into what he called "accountability journalism." This meant, in practice, that the AP would feel free to editorialize against those it didn't like, under the guise of holding them "accountable."
Today, the AP offers us one of the most shameless examples we've seen in some time. Writer Josh Boak believes Barack Obama's economic policies were wonderful, and that Obama was underappreciated because he "focused on solutions" rather than blaming others - all of which contributed to widespread public ignorance of Obama's brilliance, and the lamentable decision of the voters to choose Donald Trump as his successor.
Barack Obama’s first job as president: Piece together the shards of a shattered U.S. economy.
It wasn’t smooth and it wasn’t fast, but Obama ultimately succeeded.
The president leaves behind an economy far stronger than the one he inherited. Unemployment is 4.6%, a nine-year low. Stocks keep ascending to new highs. An additional 20.2 million Americans have health insurance coverage. The nation has shifted toward cleaner energy sources: natural gas, wind and solar.
But those achievements have yet to erase the scars of the 2008 financial crisis.
Polling after the November election showed that nearly two-thirds of voters described the economy as “not so good” or “poor.” Those voters chose to pass the presidency to Donald Trump, a Republican who railed against a weak economy and promised to unwind many of Obama’s policies.
The contrast between Obama and his successor helps to explain why the economic progress of the past eight years has yet to resonate with much of the country. Obama set policies with a professorial calmness and often spoke with a stoic resolve, just as Trump barnstormed the country by talking at a gut level to supporters who saw the recovery leaving their communities behind.
“Historians will remember President Obama for his rational, evidence-based approach,” former economic adviser Alan Krueger said, “as opposed to the emotional, visceral style of the two presidents who will bookend his time in office.”
Staring down the gravest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, Obama focused on solutions rather than villains, an approach that aides say will be appreciated over time.
Should I write more now, or wait for you to clean up the mess wherever you just vomited?
The media is clearly upset with the public for electing Trump and for giving Republicans continued control of Congress, and feels the need to chastise you for failing to appreciate the wondrous leader you are now sending out the door without a supportive success to keep his wonderful policies in place.
Let's just consider the points Boak makes in the excerpt above:
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U-3 unemployment may be low, but labor force participation is at its lowest level since 1978. If government statistics actually took into account people who have given up and dropped out of the workforce, this number would tell an entirely different story.
There may be 20 million more people with health insurance, but most of them simply went on Medicaid, and those who got insurance via the ObamaCare exchanges have had massive problems like plans being cancelled and premiums soaring. And now many of the exchanges themselves are collapsing, as the insurers lose billions trying to operate within the absurd market constraints set forth by ObamaCare.
The stock market goes up and down, and while liberals seems to fixate on the Dow at a given point in time for whatever reason, people who understand business know that the real measures of business health are profits, sales, job creation and expansion - not stock prices.
We have not shifted to alternative fuels to any great degree, Boak's claim notwithstanding. We are still mostly reliant on fossil fuels, which Obama has made increasingly difficult to extract and exploit - especially on federal lands.
As for the claim that the economy is stronger overall, it's no surprise that Boak didn't mention the average annual GDP growth under Obama, which is less than 2.0 percent - the weakest post-recession recovery in modern history.
You can see the pattern here. Each of the "facts" Boak presents is only part of the picture. Yet he presents that one part, totally devoid of context, in a way that suggests it's the beginning and the end of the story and that it proves Obama's awesomeness.
He then goes on to wag his finger at Trump voters who, he believes, got snookered by a clever con artist and failed to appreciate the wonderful leader who gave us his "rational, evidence-based approach."
If the AP had wanted to run this while labeling it as an opinion piece, it would still have been one of the weakest opinion pieces out there. But at least that would have been an honest presentation of what Boak wrote. Instead, it purports to explain with objective authority how truly wonderful Obama was, and how dumb we all are for failing to appreciate his greatness.
It's astonishing that any Republican ever gets elected when garbage like this is standard practice from the news media. The only thing I can suggest is that the public has caught in large numbers, and is no longer fooled by such propaganda - which is just about all you get these days from the AP.
Always beware one of the most dishonest offerings of the mainstream media - the "news analysis." Theoretically this is when a journalist goes more in-depth than usual by explaining the background of an issue - going through its causes and effects and helping you better grasp the drivers behind the mere facts. That is what it's supposed to be. That is not what it usually is.
Usually, it's an opportunity for a liberal reporter who write his opinion under the guise of "analysis," not labeling the piece as opinion so as to give it a certain cachet of trustworthiness. This isn't just this guy's opinion, you're supposed to think. He's a journalist! He's just helping us understand the facts.
