The shift in reporting on monthly unemployment figures at CNSNews.com continues to show a marked change now that a Republican is president.
Susan Jones’ main article on February’s jobless numbers carries the optimistic headline “152,528,000: Record Number of Employed in February; Participation Rate Rises.” By contrast, the headlines in the Obama era would tout how many people were not in the workforce, even though many people choose not to work due to being retired or students. Jones actually notes that prominently in her article — something she usually failed to do under Obama.
We get the usual sidebar from Terry Jeffrey fretting about increasing government jobs and the comparatively lower number of manufacturing jobs — but true to right-wing form, Jeffrey gives no credit to Obama for the fact that, according to the chart accompanying his article, manufacturing jobs have been on the increase since 2010.
Missing again from CNS’ coverage are a couple of old Obama-era favorites: articles on the “real” unemployment rate and the high rate of black unemployment. Those got replaced by an article by Melanie Arter uncritically quoting White House press secretary Sean Spicer asserting that the unemployment numbers “may have been phony in the past but it’s very real now,” though he provided no evidence that the methodology for computing the numbers has changed at all.
If one needs an example of CNS’ right-wing, pro-Trump bias, we can’t think of a clearer one.