The Media Research Center — proving that it’s a partisan political organization and not a “media research” one — loves to embrace whatever the Republicans’ anti-Biden talking point du jour is, only to abandon it when it proves to be overblown or outright false (while not explaining that fact to readers). Joseph Vazquez gave it the ol’ biased try in a July 19 post trying to exploit a large one-day stock drop to blame it on President Biden:
CNBC had the spin on the massive stock market sell-off story so fast it was as if the outlet was just waiting to protect the Biden administration from any bad news.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell a whopping 725.81 points July 19 as “anxiety mounted over the spread of the Delta coronavirus variant and its potential impact on the global economy,” The Wall Street Journal reported. It was the “worst session since October” for the index.
But CNBC seemed to already know how it would spin the story at 10:42 a.m. when the market was in the heat of its nosedive: “Stock market volatility can be an opportunity for investors. Here’s why.”
CNBC pulled the nothing-to-see-here angle from its back pocket and pontificated how “[w]hile volatility can be troubling for investors, experts caution against any hasty selling when markets fall.” Really?
The outlet ran two subheadings in its piece that were just as absurd given the extent of the market downturn. The first was “Volatility is common.” The second was “Volatility can be your friend.”
Vazquez went on to insinst that “CNBC’s gaslighting of the potential effects of the market’s drop made the news outlet’s irresponsible behavior toward the stock market news all the more egregious.”
Later, Curtis Houck complained that “the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC played the role of PR professionals for the White House” becuase it didn’t sufficiently report on “the pitiful day on Wall Street.”
But the MRC never brought up this attack again. Why? Because the very next day, the Dow increased 549 points — and by the end of that week on July 23, the Dow had increase more than 1,000 points from the July 19 close. In other words, CNBC was right about stock market volatility, and Vazquez’s attack was bogus.
As one can assume, the MRC has a double standard on this. In 2019, the MRC complained that the media covered an 800-point Dow drop — a much bigger drop than the one Vazquez fearmongered over because the Dow average was lower at the time — and even quoted CNBC’s Jim Cramer to demand that the media “dial back the hysteria.” Vazquez and Houck didn’t pick up that lesson, apparently.