Categories: OLD Media Moves

The rise of income inequality coverage

Meredith Hamrick, a senior business journalism student at UNC-Chapel Hill, writes about the increase of financial media writing about income inequality.

Hamrick writes, “A Lexis Nexis search revealed that the term ‘income inequality’ appeared in The New York Times 430 times in 2013, compared to 277 in the previous year. CNN.com articles mentioned the term 79 times in 2013 compared to 25 times in the previous year.

“Bloomberg Television transcripts contained the term 141 times in 2013 and just 64 times in the previous one.

“What’s more, the term barely got any attention at all before 2011. CNN.com and Bloomberg TV transcripts mentioned it just 10 times each in 2010. The Times mentioned it more frequently – some 46 times in 2010 – but at a rate that still pales in comparison to recent coverage of the issue.

“When it comes to coverage of income inequality, it’s difficult to tell who started covering it first.

“‘Bloomberg’s been covering income inequality for a while, and that’s mostly because people have been talking about it for a while,’ said Victoria Stilwell, an economics reporter at Bloomberg. ‘This is something that’s been written about way before Obama – especially on Bloomberg’s end.’

“That may be true for Bloomberg’s print operations, but Bloomberg TV transcripts reveal that the term ‘income inequality’ didn’t receive a single mention in segments during 2007 or 2008.

“Gus Lubin, deputy editor at Business Insider, said that the site posted its first article on income inequality in early 2010 – a collection of charts showing trends in income inequality that would ‘blow your mind.’ The article, in typical Business Insider fashion, contained 15 charts with short, punchy captions. It ended with a chart captioned ‘If you aren’t in the top 1 percent of American earners, you’re pretty much screwed.'”