The media’s role in how the economy is perceived

NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik was interviewed by Michel Martin on one of its shows about how consumers perceive what’s going on in the economy.

Here is an excerpt:

MARTIN: So, David, why do you think there is this gap between what the big economic indicators are showing and the nature of the coverage that we’re seeing?

FOLKENFLIK: Look, the pandemic truly was a shock, and a lot of people are still hurting. But let’s pause here. Unemployment has been below 4% for about two years now. That’s extraordinary. Wage increase is outstripping inflation for a while now. And there are these two scholars at the Brookings Institution with a study that’s just out looking at news coverage and consumer sentiment since 1980. They say the tone of news coverage about the economy has become markedly more negative over the past six years, and the sheer volume of that negative coverage has increased notably over the past three years, which coincides with the Biden presidency. So that’s their conclusion. I think there’s a reason that helps contribute to that, that after so much intense coverage of former President Donald Trump’s outrages and indictments and incitements and impeachments, the press corps is seeking to prove it can be tough on Joe Biden, too. But I also think there is kind of this intensification that happens in a social media age and a somewhat oppositional stance that’s hard to let up even when the news is good.

MARTIN: So what does all this mean?

FOLKENFLIK: Well, voters are at once absorbing from the news media and reflecting back to reporters a distrust of the economy. But there’s a bitter irony here. The media has had all these tough headlines, and advertisers have believed them. So that means, despite all this incredibly low employment, there’s been a recession in the media industry, in institution after institution, including our own.

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