The mainstream media has made much of U.S. President Barack Obama’s approval ratings news of late – especially when they’re low. This blogger’s theory is the media itself drives the approval ratings just by reporting on the President’s numbers in a selected way, but that’s not what this blog post is about.
Still, here’s an example: The Huffington Post just reported that President Obama’s approval rating was low, but for one state: Virginia. And rather than say Obama’s approval rating was at 46 percent in the state, HuffPo said his “disapproval rating” was at 54 percent.
If the notoriously liberal Huffington Post were really supportive of Obama, they would report what this blogger discovered: that President Obama’s average approval rating is higher than that for Ronald Regan during his first term.
Ronald Reagan’s overall average first-term approval rating was just 50.3 percent. By contrast, President Obama’s average first term approval rating checks in at over 51 percent. Ronald Reagan posted that average during an economy hammered by inflation and the first surges in the overall decline of America’s manufacturing industry.
Yet Reagan was re-elected to a second term.
Why point to President Reagan? Because there has been a ton of shoddy reporting, journalism, and blogging about Barack Obama and the American Economy. Numbers on unemployment rates have been given without proper political context.
For example, CNN has televised that black unemployment is at its highest level (16 percent as of this writing) since 1983. But the overall U.S. unemployment level for this year is currently at over 9 percent, and was last at 9.1 percent. And while that rate has been high, it wasn’t higher than in 1983, when it stood at over 11 percent (by reports 11.3 percent).
That was under President Reagan.
Considering the problems of job discrimination, lack of urban investment, and improper skill set and training, it’s more than logical that black unemployment would be high at both high points for American unemployment as a whole.
But that kind of fair reporting is not explained, and given Mother Jones recent articles about the influence of the billionaires and millionaires who don’t want President Obama re-elected, it’s time to ask if they are buying and influencing some journalists?
That’s a good question considering a controversial charge that much of the media was in on how the Bush White House wanted the media to report on the Iraq War after 9-11. In the case of CNN, there is evidence of how they “fixed” reporting.
Could this be true with respect to the President.
Stay tuned.