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Despite a 9% unemployment rate and polls showing job creation as voters’ top concern, it certainly seems as if the media establishment has bought into the conservative frame and put deficit reduction atop the nation’s to-do list.
As it turns out, this isn’t just a matter of perception. It’s a quantifiable phenomenon.
Greg Sargent flags this National Journal study, which, one hopes, editors, producers, and publishers will take seriously.
Major U.S. newspapers have increasingly shifted their attention away from coverage of unemployment in recent months while greatly intensifying their focus on the deficit, a National Journal analysis shows.
The analysis — based on a measure of how often the words “unemployment” and “deficit” appear in major publications — portrays a dramatically shifting landscape of coverage over the past two years, as the debate over how to fix the federal deficit has risen to prominence and the question of how to handle still-high unemployment has faded from the media’s consciousness.
I suppose conservative Republicans deserve some credit for playing the game so exceptionally well. A certain school of thought would argue that a political party would have to be crazy to see high unemployment and overwhelming public demand for job creation, only to start talking about something else — an agenda that’s likely to slow the economy and make unemployment worse.
But the right doesn’t see the public discourse as it is; the right sees the discourse as it could be. In this case, the GOP didn’t fight the prevailing winds, the party simply blew in a different direction, focusing exclusively on fiscal issues until everyone else came along. The media was easy — Very Serious People always prioritize fiscal issues above all else — and since voters tend to confuse concepts like the deficit and the recession anyway, there was no backlash.
What’s more, note that this was the Republican strategy all along. In 2009, a variety of GOP leaders, including Tim Pawlenty, believed the key to addressing the global economic crisis was a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. In 2010, Democrats were afraid to even propose jobs bills because the public had been conditioned to hate “spending.”
And in 2011, with Dems reluctant to go against the prevailing winds, especially after their drubbing in the midterms, nearly everyone in the political establishment is focused on the same thing: reducing the deficit and ignoring the jobs crisis.
Greg calls this the “Beltway Deficit Feedback Loop,” and it’s nice to see a study showing how real it is.
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blondie on May 17, 2011 3:15 PM:
And those in the business of journalism wonder why circulation is falling and no one reads newspapers any more ... Perhaps it's because they don't bother to cover what MOST PEOPLE CARE ABOUT!!
(Sorry for shouting - it's a subject that leaves me fuming.)
AndThenThere'sThat on May 17, 2011 3:15 PM:
And in 2011,.... nearly everyone in the political establishment is focused on the same thing: reducing the deficit and ignoring the jobs crisis.
No. Nobody, save perhaps the White House to a certain degree, is at all focused on "reducing the deficit". Congressional mealy mouth Democrats are too busy chasing the GOP line of the day too focus on anything but that. And the GOP's "roadmap" which doesn't get the deficit under control for about 50 years, and even then only under ridiculously optimistic scenarios all while cutting taxes on the rich and not touching the military budget is anything but "serious". So, no. Pretty much nobody is serious about what they say they are serious about.
Captcha says "DONALDO hermiel", which I take to mean "The Donald has withdrawn" in Spanish.
Tang on May 17, 2011 3:21 PM:
I think the more they talk about the deficit now and get the Dems and the Pres on that route, the more they can turn to the unemployment numbers right before the election and claim the Dems and Pres are not paying attention to the issues Americans care about.
The right controls the media memes - so this seems to me the most logical approach for them.
SadOldVet on May 17, 2011 3:23 PM:
It continues to amaze me that Benen keeps expressing surprise over and over again that the corporately owned media is performing their function as an echo chamber and message amplifier for the repuke party!
bdop4 on May 17, 2011 3:26 PM:
Maybe the study wouldn't be so bad if Democrats stopped using the "D" word so much. You know the repubs are going to be saying it, but every time they do, a Dem should be saying "JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!!"
max on May 17, 2011 3:27 PM:
Same old, same old. The GOP owns the corporate media and they report whatever the GOP wants them to report.
Danny on May 17, 2011 3:30 PM:
Dems won't make a big push on jobs again before they have a chance getting it through congress. Thanks to those who sat out 2010 that's an impossibility right now, with 70+ crazy teab-ggers in the house. Since a job bill necessarily costs money they would get hammered for deficit spending without having a single job to show for it.
Luckily job growth may still be picking up steam thanks to measures in 09-10 + the lame duck compromise. So what can be done to get other progressive issues back on the front burner is winning back the house in 2012. That's about it. Don't like the obsessive deficit and government spending focus? More dems should have got their -ss to the polling booth. Simple as that.
Vince on May 17, 2011 3:31 PM:
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform was charted on February 18, 2010 by executive order 13531 (http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/charter). It was, of course, Obama who signed the order. That commission and their meetings throughout the year helped add a lot of bipartisan weight to the notion that the deficit issue must be fixed and fixed now.
And, so, while the Republicans do, indeed, deserve a lot of credit for changing the topic from jobs to deficit, they got a pretty big assist from the Democratic party, starting at the top. Democrats need to stop being "afraid" of the mean nasty Republicans and start leading. Hey, they might even win elections by doing that.
And, I agree the commenters who don't like captcha. Isn't the point of captcha to stop robo posting? Was that a big problem on this blog?
stormskies on May 17, 2011 3:34 PM:
Maybe this blog, and others, should prioritize it focus so that it exposes the corporate/ repiglican media every singe day. Document and expose, and name names every day. The corporate/ repiglican media is really akin to a kind of mafia. It's a rigged game, and they it well. And they pay their automaton 'journalists' very well to do what they are hired to do. So they sit there in their million dollars suites, ties, and dresses and look at you through your TV and lie, deceive, commit fraud, and robotically repeat the propaganda every single day. They are in reality journalistic criminals.
Okie on May 17, 2011 3:38 PM:
This is what they meant by "We create our own reality."
Seriously.
walt on May 17, 2011 3:42 PM:
What this really reflects is the lack of civic engagement by working-poor minorities and women. If these people voted at rate comparable to elderly whites, this would not only be a solidly Democratic country, it be a social democracy like one finds in Europe. Also, the GOP would be a legitimate political party instead of a bunch of zonked-out zealots. The Democrats don't represent the poor simply because they've got bigger hands to palm (say, Wall Street's). Until this changes, the nation will continue to slip into the hard grip of oligarchy.
Sparko on May 17, 2011 3:43 PM:
I'm with stormskies on this. Document the damage as it happens. Call out the fraudulent media every single day. I noticed Fox had turned to "disturbing" inflation trends. With $4 a gallon gas, guess the volatile energy sector matters after all. We are in crisis already.
Anonymous on May 17, 2011 3:49 PM:
"I suppose conservative Republicans deserve some credit for playing the game so exceptionally well"
As they always do; as they always do. Republicans - in spite of convincing evidence that some can barely form coherent sentences in the only language they know - are legendary for party discipline and message control. The trouble is, as you have hinted, they really are just "playing a game"; and it's one in which they have no skin, from the standpoint that they don't stand to lose anything personally if they lose. None of these guys is going to be homeless or jobless or have to think about which meal they'll have to skip today if the attempt to redirect attention away from jobs is unsuccessful.
And oh, if they win.....
k l m on May 17, 2011 3:50 PM:
It should also be noted that some very subtle word play is going on. Obama 'tries to explain' or 'tries to sell' some policy, while Boehner and Co. 'explain' or 'sell' their nonsense. Have heard this on NPR and seen it repeatedly in many news stories.
stormskies on May 17, 2011 3:53 PM:
Talk about timing. I am watching Al Jazeera right now on my computer and the show they have on is about the U.S corporate media, and the propaganda they create on behalf of the corporations themselves: how they shut out anything that is not in their own self interests. No wonder the corporate media in our country will not allow Al Jazeera to be broadcast in this country. I watch them every day and fucking a what a difference in how the 'news' is reported. Like night and day.
chi res on May 17, 2011 4:05 PM:
Maybe this blog, and others, should prioritize it focus so that it exposes the corporate/ repiglican media every singe day.
It's called Media Matters for America.
http://mediamatters.org/
stormskies on May 17, 2011 4:14 PM:
It's going to take more than one site to do this. Most of what media matters does is about Fox propaganda, and not enough about NBC, CBS, and ABC.
DK on May 17, 2011 4:47 PM:
The repubs can't directly oppose the job creation efforts of the dems. So they talk about how government can't create jobs and how government spending and taxes are preventing private sector jobs. The ultimate goal is to drive unemployment up as high as possible in hopes of gaining the White House.
Jimo on May 17, 2011 4:49 PM:
So...Obama plans to use the bully pulpit to pivot attention back to unemployment and economy? You know, the cool cat, whose every word is recorded, who can get a camera any day he wants. You know, it's not difficult to deal with birth certificate questions when your answer is: 'I've yet to see a jobs bill from the Republican House. They need to shelve their obsession with abortion and focus on the needs of unemployed Americans.'
ROFL Of course not. Obama takes things as they are, laments that 'the votes aren't there,' and gets angry at the base for demanding more effective leadership.
Of course, if every economic aide around him wasn't beholden to corporate and financial (self)interests, EVERY day would center on WWMDAU - What We Must Do About Unemployment.
I don't know if Obama thinks the unemployed don't vote in linchpin Ohio (and PA, MI, WV) or if he's just written the state off.
exlibra on May 17, 2011 7:57 PM:
Danny on May 17, 2011 3:30 PM:
Dems won't make a big push on jobs again before they have a chance getting it through congress.
You mean Congressional Dems are so pusillanimous that they're only willing to "push" on certainties? None of the "if at first you don't succeed..." nonsense? What about giving it "a good, old college try" and then yelling about it every chance they get (and manufacture, if the chance isn't offered)?
I want to hear them say, often: "I offered this and that bill, but Boner never let it come to the floor for discussion. All he's interested in is voodoo math under the cover of 'debt deficit reduction'" When they don't, when Dems act like they're OK with the Repub framing and scheduling, they appear to be actually colluding with the SOBs. And that's hardly a poll-booth magnet.
max on May 18, 2011 9:21 AM:
I'm with stormskies as well regarding this blog's potential to expose the political leanings of our corporate (network) media programs. You still have imbeciles like Sararh Palin screeching about the "lamstream liberal media" and people actually belief this tripe, and I'm not just talking about tea baggers and other dim bulbs. It's a huge popular misconception that needs to be debunked on a regular basis. The mainstream media is not "liberal" or "progressive". Only a loony social conservative would believe otherwise. The corporate media is right of center on the substantive (i.e., economic) issues; the issues the touch everyone.