For the past year and change, the Media Research Center has been doing the bidding of its right-wing supporters by insisting that President Biden is the sole cause of inflation in the country as part of its efforts to talk down the economy for partisan gain. A February 2023 “study” by Rich Noyes hammered on this partisan narrative:
Among the policy catastrophes inflicted on Americans by the Biden administration, the rampant inflation of the last two years is the most devastating because its damaging effects are felt across the entire society. Yet a new study from the Media Research Center finds the overwhelming majority (84%) of TV news coverage of this inflation disaster failed to mention President Biden or his administration — and when reporters did discuss the President, they mostly depicted him as working to solve the problem, rather than blaming him for causing it.
For this report, MRC analysts looked at ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage of inflation from May 1, 2022 through January 31, 2023, including weekends. This period includes some of the worst months for inflation (with the Consumer Price Index, or CPI, registering a shocking 9.1% in June 2022, the highest since 1981), as well as gasoline prices reaching an unprecedented $5/gallon across the country.
All three evening newscasts spent considerable airtime documenting the distress of American consumers, with NBC Nightly News devoting the most (233 minutes) to the story during the nine months we examined. The CBS Evening News was close behind, with 216 minutes of inflation coverage, while ABC’s World News Tonight lagged, spending 93 minutes on the subject.
Combined, that’s a hefty 542 minutes of airtime, an average of about an hour every month since last spring. Virtually all of the networks’ full-length reports included multiple interviews with consumers angry about the high prices, plus families on tight budgets who were being financially crippled.
But when it came to evidence to back up his blame-Biden narrative, Noyes came up short. He whined about the “monstrous $1.9 trillion spending spree dubbed the ‘American Rescue Plan,’” but even then had to admit there was no evidence it was solely to blame:
So exactly how much of the blame can be rested at Joe Biden’s feet? “Last month, consumer prices grew at a 7.5 percent annual rate — a new four-decade high. How much of the surge in prices is due to President Biden’s $1.9 trillion March stimulus, known as the American Rescue Plan? My answer: around three percentage points in 2021,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Strain, a right-of-center economist, concluded last February.
That squares with a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco last March, on the impact of those stimulus checks: “U.S. income transfers may have contributed to an increase in inflation of about 3 percentage points by the fourth quarter of 2021.”
Among experts, there’s little doubt about Biden’s role in fueling a significant amount of this high inflation, and the resulting hardship to tens of millions of American families. Yet the national news media are doing the President a huge political favor by mostly keeping his name, and his blame, out of their coverage of America’s epic inflation nightmare.
Noyes conveniently overlooked the fact that while the American Rescue Plan did increase inflation, it resulted in the fastest post-pandemic economic recovery of any major nation.
Since this was a “study,” it had to be promoted in right-wing media, and MRC chief Brent Bozell did the deed on Fox News a couple days later, whining that “our news media…simply do not want to pin any blame on the donkey when it comes to looking at, at the economy, the economic numbers under Joe Biden.” He too refused to mention the fact that Biden’s policies ultimately led to a quick post-pandemic economic recovery.
The MRC spent much of the rest of 2023 complaining that its right-wing narratives were being ignored outside right-wing media. When a pair of writers pointed out that corporate greed played a role in boosting inflation, Luis Cornelio huffed in an April 14 post:
Two Bloomberg Opinion columnists claimed that American consumers and corporate greed are responsible for Biden’s inflation—because Americans have been “too accepting” of growing prices. In what world do they live?
Bloomberg Opinion columnists Chris Bryant and Andrea Felsted let their willful ignorance show when they called on U.S. consumers to get off their couches and protest consumer price increases. After all, it’s their allowance of corporate greed — not massive government spending — that is responsible for inflation. “When inflation took off in the 1960s, people didn’t just grumble about rising prices — they protested in front of local stores,” the Bloomberg authors wrote. “It’s time this generation of consumers push back harder against unnecessary price increases.”
Numerous economists have warned that inflation is caused by government spending, not by corporations. “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. That’s one of the iron rules of economics,” renowned economist and author Stephen Moore told MRC Business. “If inflation is promoted by corporate greed then why is it that the two industries that have had the highest inflation rates are in health care and education that are dominated by government and nonprofit institutions?”
Moore, of course, is a right-wing economist who can be counted on to deliver partisan narratives, so his word isn’t exactly reliable.
Even as inflation started to decrease as 2023 went on, the MRC labored to place sole blame on Biden anyway. For instance:
- CNN Regurgitates Ridiculous Biden Propaganda on Inflation
- CNN Forgets Who the President Is in Story About Crushing Inflation
- Big Three Networks Ignore Rising Prices, As Government Reports Increase in Inflation
- DEJA VU: Fact-Butcher Glenn Kessler DOUBLES DOWN on Debunked ‘Slipshod’ Inflation Spin
- ‘Progress’? 9 Leftist Media Outlets Sugarcoat Hot Inflation Numbers to Protect Biden
When another writer pointed out that continued strong consumer spending is fueling inflation, Joseph Vazquez had a meltdown in a Dec. 4 post:
The leftist Atlantic actually victim-blamed Americans for the crushing high prices they’re experiencing. In the same breath, the outlet billed President Joe Biden’s ridiculously bad economy as the cat’s pajamas.
“Inflation Is Your Fault,” read the condescending headline by Atlantic staff writer Annie Lowrey. She opted for just talking down to the plebeians by simply chalking up Americans’ misery to consumer overspending.
Lowrey, doing damage control for Biden, proceeded to scold Americans: “People hate inflation, just not enough to spend less: This is one of the central tensions of today’s economy, in which things are going great yet everyone is miserable. And in some ways, Americans have nobody to blame but themselves.” Yikes. [Emphasis added.]
She didn’t bother mentioning Biden’s name at all in her piece until the last paragraph, and it was only to make excuses for his administration’s outrageous, inflation-stimulating spending policies. She appeared to hinge her entire argument on consumer spending rising 0.2 percent in October, glossing over the fact that this was a significant 0.5 percentage-point slowdown from the 0.7 percent increase in September and was the “slowest increase since May,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
If “everyone is miserable,” how could things be “going great”?
[…]Lowrey can’t have it both ways. Either Biden’s economy is great in her mind or it isn’t, and reality clearly proves the latter.
Actually, Vazquez is the one trying to have it both ways. If this bout of inflation has been so onerous, why have so many people continued to spend anyway?