CNSNews.com’s coverage of December’s unemployment numbers was a blitz of pro-Trump rah-rah — the complete opposite of CNS’ coverage of the December 2016 numbers.
Trump fangirl Susan Jones cheered in her main story:
On November 20, President Trump tweeted: “Under President Trump unemployment rate will drop below 4%. Analysts predict economic boom for 2018!”
On Friday, the nation’s unemployment rate remained at a 17-year low of 4.1 percent for the third straight month, and the number of employed people increased by 103,000 to 154,021,000, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
Since December 2016, 1,788,000 people have been added to the nation’s employment roster, and the number of employed people has set six records since February, most recently in September.
The article is illustrated with a picture of a Trump “Make America Great Again” hat, just to hammer home the point that Jones is doing Trump’s bidding here.
By contrast, as we’ve documented, Jones’ main article on the December 2016 unemployment rate led with the number of people not in the labor force, didn’t mention the December unemployment rate until the seventh paragraph and waited until the 13th paragraph to concede that 14.8 million people found jobs during Obama’s presidency.
Speaking of which, Jones failed to mention that those 1.7 million jobs created in 2017 was the lowest one-year total since 2011.
CNS then churned out a raft of Trump-fluffing sidebars:
- 196,000 Manufacturing Jobs Added in 2017
- Federal Government Cut 16,000 Jobs in 2017
- Unemployment Dropped in 2017 for Workers of All Educational Levels
- Worker Shortage Hits Record High; Small Businesses Respond with Pay Hikes
By contrast, CNS sidebars related to the December 2016 unemployment rate referenced high black unemployment (despite the fact it has always been higher than white unemployment), the decline in manufacturing jobs (which have been declining for 30 years) and the purportedly “real” unemplyment rate (a metric CNS has curiously not referenced during Trump’s presidency).
CNS primed this pro-Trump barrage with a Dec. 18 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman cheering how “the unemployment rate for black Americans is the lowest it has been since the year 2000, 17 years ago.” Needless to say, Chapman doesn’t mention that this is simply the continuation of a trend that began under President Obama.