Fox News Says Unemployment Doubled Under Obama

Posted by icarus on 11 Sep 2012 / 0 Comment

These guys. These f–ing guys. Fox News is the most dishonest “news” outlet that exists in the entire world. They are a 24-7 hour propaganda channel being run by one of Richard “I’m not a crook” Nixon’s former advisers; the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. This 2 minutes on air is a perfect example of why Fox “News” viewers are the worst informed of all the viewers of all the U.S. news outlets (source). Let’s break this down for a minute…

#1 – You may notice that in order to fully demonstrate how bad the economy is … they don’t just say that 12.5 million people are unemployed (source) … nah – that might seem to low after all it is a country of 320 million people. So … then they add in “underemployed” people which is a real issue but a new standard by which to judge a president’s record. When President Bush was president – not even once did they dare to estimate potential underemployed; this is a new standard. But even THAT ISN’T enough … they then throw in people who stopped looking for work to come to their conclusion that over 23 million have been affected.

Steve Benen adds HERE:

The truth, for anyone who’s interested, isn’t hard to find. In February 2009, Obama’s first full month in office, the U.S. economy lost 726,000 jobs and the standard unemployment rate was 8.2%. In August 2012, the U.S. economy added about 100,000 jobs and unemployment fell to 8.1%. Republicans can argue that’s not good enough, and they can argue they would have done better, but if they don’t want to be laughed at, they shouldn’t try silly stunts like Fox News’.

#2 – They claim that under Bush – the real unemployment rate AND the “underemployment” under Bush was 7.8% vs. 14.7% today. Once again – we all know the real standard … the only government standard that has ever existed is the actual unemployment rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t track “underemployment” month to month if ever. The unemployment rate right now is 8.1%; that’s a fact and that is the measuring stick that unemployment has always been measured. As unemployment gets better … so does “underemployment”. You want to know what the Fox News headline was on 9/12/2008?

Fox News: Feds Hold Emergency Meeting to Discuss Lehman Brothers

And then there were these from exactly four years ago:

Washington Post: U.S. Helps Lehman Go Up for Sale

NY Times: U.S. Gives Banks Urgent Warning to Solve Crisis

Bloomberg: Alt-A Mortgages Next Risk for Housing Market as Defaults Surge

Those were the good times huh? The calm right before the economy got totally f-cked and the world imploded.

#3 – Fox claims unemployment rate for government workers is 5.1%. There is no official unemployment rate for government workers. It doesn’t exist. Government workers go from the public sector into the private sector and vice versa. When they aren’t working in the government … they’re just unemployed. So that is just made up. But it also insinuates that life is really, really good for the public sector. What with all that government spending and such … after all Fox has documented the huge increase in public sector workers under President Obama. Only that hasn’t happened. As we have shared HERE:

Government employment is at its lowest level in 45 years (source). That big spike is the surge in hiring for census workers that happens every ten years. If the country maintained the growth of public sector workers as it did under Bush (and Reagan) – the unemployment rate would be 7% right now.

In fact – as we have written before HERE – more jobs were created in the private sector last year alone than in all eight years of George W. Bush. It is the public sector that is dragging down the economy right now.

So – how could Fox News just make this stuff up you ask? Well – a recent study has shown that conservatives are more likely to make up their own facts in order to justify their beliefs (source); Fox News is a perfect example of this in action.

The Pew Research center just came out with a new study where they show that Republicans are hearing very, very different news on the economy than are most independents and Democrats. I think I know why.

They write HERE:

Differences in perceptions of economic news emerged after Barack Obama took office. But they never have been as great as they are today. Four times as many Republicans as Democrats say the news they have been hearing about the economy is mostly bad (60% vs. 15%).

As in recent months, the views of independents are roughly equidistant from those of Republicans and Democrats. In the current survey, 36% of independents say they hearing mostly bad economic news, little changed from a month ago (40%).

There also are substantial differences in how Republicans and Democrats view recent news about specific economic sectors. Half or more Republicans say the news about all the sectors included in the survey has been mostly bad. For Democrats, news about only one sector – gas prices – stands out as particularly negative (65% mostly bad).