A few days ago, we published an article detailing how CNSNews.com is weirdly obsessed with presenting the labor force participation rate as a meaningful measure of unemployment, regularly refusing to admit the fact that the number covers millions of retirees and students who are not seeking employment and are thus not “unemployed” by any stretch of the imagination.
How conveniently coincidental, then, that the very next day after our article was published, CNS published an article by Susan Jones — the author of many of those unemployment articles pushing the labor force participation rate — admitting the rate includes mostly students and retirees who aren’t looking for work.
But this being CNS, the article had to be written from an angle that echoes its right-wing agenda (which admitting it’s wrong about treating the labor force participation rate as a meaningful measure of unemployment does not do). So Jones seizes on Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erica Groshen noting that the country’s “safety net” plays a role in the labor force participation rate to highlight numbers of people on food stamps and Social Security disability.
Will Jones admit these facts about the labor force participation rate when she writes future articles obsessing about the number for new unemployment numbers? Or will she just push the “safety net” aspect of it? We shall see.
So even when it’s reporting things accurately, CNS must put a right-wing spin on things. That’s the very definition of media bias, and it’s sadly hilarious seeing it from the “news” division of a organization that purports to fight such bias.