In my opinion, politics and spin are often times synonymous. But when I read a story posted on Yahoo! News by Reuters, I couldn’t resist drawing attention to the blatant spin that occurs daily, if not hourly, in the political sphere.
As a former journalist, I feel it’s my responsibility to point out when a story simply reiterates the views of those interviewed, rather than laying an objective set of facts out on the table. Let’s take a look at the headline, “Officials say job fall won’t stall economy.” If the officials say so then you should believe it — right? Or better yet, how about we make our own decisions. Cue gasps of horror.
Moving on…a government report showed that the labor market shed jobs for the first time in four years last month, according to Reuters. So, what are our fearless leaders ready to do? Make a bad report sound good.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson called the economy healthy and growing despite later saying it would take time to work through the problems we are currently experiencing in the housing and credit markets.
It’s like a big game of hypocrisy. You can’t call something healthy and growing while at the same time acknowledging serious problems that have to be addressed.
Even worse, however, is how journalist David Lawder wrote that “another administration official, White House economic advisor Ed Lazear, also downplayed chances of recession, despite Friday’s release of the weakest monthly payrolls date since August 2003.” If Lawder knew that Lazear was downplaying the situation, than why did he hand over a good chunk of word count to what he had to say? Furthermore, why is the entire article feeding into the officials desire to smooth over the contents of the report?
It’s plain and simple — spin. – Angela Loiacono