Monday, March 7, 2011

60 Minutes Restores Some Faith in Mainstream Media

On Sunday, March 6, I tuned into 60 Minutes, the legendary CBS News Magazine, and saw a segment reported by Scott Pelley that began like this: "Unemployment improved a bit last month but it is still nearly nine percent and the trouble is job creation is so slow, it will be years before we get back the seven and a half million jobs lost in the Great Recession. American families have been falling out of the middle class in record numbers. The combination of lost jobs and millions of foreclosures means a lot of folks are homeless and hungry for the first time in their lives.

"One of the consequences of the recession that you don't hear a lot about is the record number of children descending into poverty."

For a moment, I thought I had taken a trip back in time to one of the Republican administrations.  It seemed that no matter how good the economy was by comparison during the Reagan, George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush administration, 60 Minutes would always do an occasional segment on how people are suffering despite the rosy picture the President's economic advisers were painting at that time.

This time we have a Democratic President that many in the mainstream media, including those  at CBS News, have been promoting long before he was elected.  Yet 60 Minutes had the integrity to report a segment informing its viewers what most unemployed people already know: the recently announced unemployment rate of 8.9 percent is almost meaningless considering how the economy continues to struggle and how job growth continues to be meager given the number of people still looking for work.

Thank you 60 Minutes for pointing out that we have families struggling economically just as much under a Democratic administration as we have had under Republican administrations.  I remember saying to friends and family members in 2008 that the winner of the Presidential election might end up being the loser.  No matter who got elected, we were and still are in the worst economic climate of my lifetime, and we are likely to stagnate for awhile before things really start to get better.

Since most people are not well educated in economics, they don't understand that politicians of both parties often do more harm than good when they try to artificially tinker with the economy to get it moving again.  They might be better off to just let the economy cycle through its normal periods of growth and retraction.  Many of the moves our government officials make in attempt to strengthen the economy often lengthen the painful economic periods.

Nevertheless, I'd like to thank CBS News for pointing out that it doesn't matter who is in the White House during such difficult times.  Many people are facing economic adversity, and it doesn't appear that it will get better anytime soon.

1 comment:

  1. house prices in the tank...hyperinflation just rearing its head...gas and food prices skyrocket...unemployment actually over 15%...thank you politicians, especially democrats who have been running most big cities outide of texas for over 50 years now

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