The Media Research Center loves to talk down the economy when a Democrat is president, and one of its key missions in this election year as an adjunct of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is pin the sole blame for inflation on President Biden even as inflation has dropped dramatically from early post-pandemic highs. Nicholas Fondacaro did his partisan duty in hyping it in a Feb. 7 post:
While they’ve largely been unwilling to put a spotlight on how bad the economy has been, due in large part to them trying to keep President Biden clean for the election, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today discovered that inflation was causing people to pay more on their debt and shell out more money for fast food on Wednesday. Reacting to the cost of fast food, NBC co-anchor Craig Melvin declared: “Now we care about inflation,” meanwhile, his colleague made a joke out of high prices.
Fondacaro offered no evidence that Biden is solely to blame for it, nor did he explain that an economy that has consistently low unemployment, job growth and positive GDP is “bad.”
Joseph Vazquez raged that non-right-wing media outlets won’t spout the counterfactual “bad economy” narrative in a Feb. 13 post:
Consumer prices jumped hotter-than-expected, and leftist media outlets were predictably fumbling over themselves trying to spin the bad news in any which way they could to protect the floundering Biden economy.
The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation report showed that consumer prices spiked 3.1 percent year-over year, with a 0.3 percent increase month-over-month, both exceeding expectations. CBS News even conceded the new hot numbers “complicat[ed]” the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates. The outlet also noted that higher prices “remain sticky.” The Dow Jones Industrial Average also tumbled over 400 points following the news.
But that didn’t stop outlets like CNN from trying to flip the script as if their readers were too stupid to see right through the manufactured haze. “Good news for Americans: Inflation cooled back down in January,” read CNN’s twisted headline. CNN’s ridiculous tweet of its story was just as bad: “US inflation cooled down in January, offering some relief for Americans who have suffered through the steepest price hikes in four decades.” Saying “Inflation cooled less than expected” is a completely backward way of describing a hot inflation report. [Emphasis added.]
Vazquez continued to rage that media outlets accurately reported that inflation fell year-over-year but didn’t add the right-wing spin that it didn’t fall as much as expected. But he failed to tell readers about all the positive indicators in employment and GDP that contradict his claim of a “floundering Biden economy,” nor did he explain why Biden is solely to blame for it.
Jorge Bonilla cheered in a Feb. 14 post that evening network newscasts served up more right-wing-friendly framing — or, in his biased language, were “far more reflective of the harsh reality of what the report indicated” — declaring that “the evening newscasts just pulled the band-aid on the economic news of the day.”
The MRC repeated this exercise again when February’s inflation numbers came in. Bonilla huffed in a March 13 post:
Another month, another inconvenient Consumer Price Index report- and another embarrassment for the Biden administration which the Regime Media now have to spin away or, as in the case of the evening network newscasts, outright hide from viewers.
[…]Given the choice to report the full extent of the significance of this inflation report to the American consumer, one major evening newscast flicked off a minimalist report and the other two omitted the subject altogether. The election might still be close to eight months away, but the media are already in midseason protect-the-precious form.
Again, Bonilla didn’t explain how bad inflation numbers are solely Biden’s fault. The same day, Tom Olohan spent a post gloating that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen walked back calling inflation “transitory”:
President Joe Biden’s treasury secretary just admitted that her notorious “transitory inflation” gaslighting was wildly out of touch with reality.
During the March 13 edition of Varney and Co. on Fox Business, Secretary Yellen conceded that she regretted repeatedly insisting that the inflation crisis that’s still ravaging the country was “transitory” in 2021. Yellen told Fox Business reporter Edward Lawrence, “I regret saying [inflation] was transitory. It has come down, but I think transitory means a few weeks or months to most people.” As the old saying goes: Too little, too late.
Americans have been forced to endure an average monthly inflation rate of 5.6 percent between Feb. 2021 and Feb. 2024 under Biden. By contrast, the average monthly inflation rate under President Donald Trump was only 1.9 percent between Feb. 2017 and Jan. 2021.
Three years is a long time to bear up under crippling inflation. Members of the leftist media who have incessantly pounded the “transitory” drum like The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman also have some explaining to do.
Olohan didn’t disclose that the rate of inflation is much lower than it was in the immediate post-pandemic aftermath, and he certainly would never give Biden any credit for that.
When inflation numbers for March were again not as low as anyone wanted, the MRC was ready to pounce again. Olohan harrumphed in an April 10 post:
You know things are bad when President Joe Biden’s Praetorian Guard at CNN won’t protect him from the fact that the economy is spiraling out of control.
During the April 10 edition of CNN News Central, anchor Kate Bolduan unloaded devastating news on CNN’s unsuspecting liberal audience: There is significant inflation in April, just months before the 2024 general. During a segment, Bolduan said, “Inflation is headed in the wrong direction right now, the latest consumer price report just out shows prices up 3.5%, this over same time last year.”
CNN anchor Rahel Solomon agreed that inflation was “moving in the wrong direction.” Solomon added, “You put it pretty well there. This is moving in the wrong direction, so a 3.5% on an annual basis. To put that in context, that is hotter than what we were expecting and certainly hotter than we saw the month prior. If you look at CPI [Consumer Price Index] on a monthly basis, sort of a similar trend there, right? So coming in at 0.4% on a monthly basis. That is also hotter than we were expecting.”
Comments like this are unusual from CNN, which fought hard to protect Biden’s economic record last summer with overwhelmingly positive coverage, as exposed in an MRC study.
Instead of offering any evidence that Biden is the sole cause of higher-than-expected inflation, Olohan sneered that “CNN seems to be unaware that Americans can only be so grateful that their expensive food is getting pricier at a slower rate.”
Bonilla served up another post whining that non-right-wing outlets didn’t impose right-wing spin on the news:
The network evening newscasts did their best to bury yesterday’s bad inflation news. Literally. Both by leading their newscasts off with severe weather and by running their respective inflation items after the 10-minute mark.
The most bizarre among these reports comes from NBC Nightly News, which bifurcated the story. First, a brief read by anchor Lester Holt on the inflation report’s effect on the stock market, and then the rest as part of White House Correspondent Peter Alexander’s roundup, which covered an array of subjects.
[…]The grim news, with few silver linings, was simply too much to suppress outright. The networks, compelled to cover the story, did so reluctantly and after burning the story beneath weather reports and actual local crime stories.
Bonilla whined further in an April 25 post that non-right-wing outlets weren’t heaping right-wing-style blame on Biden for inflation:
We’ve often said that the Regime Media, often cast President Joe Biden as the truest, purest victim of whatever calamity they happen to be reporting on. And so it is with inflation, which is at or near the top of the list of voter concerns ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Here is how NBC Chief White House Correspondent Peter Alexander began his report on inflation:
[…]This perfectly sums up the report inasmuch as it throws out a lot of figures but does not assign responsibility. There is no explanation of HOW things got to where they are- only commiseration over these things that seem to have randomly happened. There is the lamentation over the slowing of the economy, but no explanation as to why there is a slowing.
There is the interview fragment with the registered dietitian mom who deals with high food prices by limiting herself to two grocery bags. But again, there is no explanation as to HOW food got so expensive. Nor is there any discussion of how a dietitian gets to the point of creating a hard “two bags” rule due to high food prices.
The report closes out with both a weird non-sequitur about families going on vacation despite inflation, and dismay over the effects of persistent inflation upon the Fed rate cuts everybody was hyping just a few months ago.
This story, unlike the recent CBS story over “sticker shock”, acknowledges the existence of President Biden. But it is only to cast him as the purest and cleanest victim of inflation- as opposed to its chief instigator.
If it weren’t for Regime Media, we’d have none at all.
Yet again, Bonilla failed to provide evidence to support his insinuation that Biden is the sole and only cause for inflation. You can’t complain about Biden being the “purest and cleanest victim” if you can’t be bothered to prove he’s not.