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February 2, 2006
Economic Perceptions
WILLisms had an interesting post the other day, talking about a report from the Pew Research Center on people's perception of the economy referenced against their political party affiliation. Here is the key chart:
The time frame is problematic, because it only shows since the Clinton administration took office, but I'm going to venture a thesis anyway. Note that at the beginning of Clinton's term in office, people's perception of the economy (which is a lagging indicator, since people's perceptions of the economy don't change immediately, but as they see the effects) was divided on partisan lines. This has also been true during the entire Bush administration. But during the Clinton administration, the perceptions converged. Why is that?
My speculation is this: reporters are a fairly liberal lot in general. My personal impression (no study of articles, which would be interesting to see if my impression bears up) is that journalists' perception of the economy, and thus reporting on the economy, is tied to whether or not the party in power shares the journalists' broad views. Given that it is largely organizations like the New York Times, Washington Post, AP, Reuters and the network news shows that drive the issues and tone for all of American reporting, and that all of those outlets are fairly liberal, it is not surprising that the economy is covered as worse than it really is during Republican administrations. Thus, the Republicans, who have a tendency to view the economy as better than it is during Republican administrations, continue to see the economy as being strong, and to dismiss the media's slanted reporting. But Democrats and Independents accept the reporting and see the economy as being weak.
Now what would be really interesting is to go back to the late 1960s, and from then until now compare the partisan views of the economy with the percentage of positive/negative economic articles and the actual economic indicators (per cent per year growth in GDP would probably be a good choice, here). That would show how the economy was really doing, how it was reported as doing, and how it was perceived as doing. And it would show if my thesis is broadly correct or not.
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Comments
It might be equally interesting to find out the party affiliation of those who still consider newspapers, the broadcast networks, and CNN (MSM) as their primary source of news, as opposed to those whose main sources of daily information include the internet, FNC, and to a lesser degree, talk radio.
I think you'd find a correlation to the figures you cite here, specifically that those who rely predominately on the "old" media are naturally more likely to accept the bias associated those outlets, and those who rely on the "new" media are more likely to view the economy more realistically than do their liberal brethren.
Those who get their economic news and views from Lou Dobbs, or Paul Krugman are going to be far less well informed and far less optimistic generally, than are those of us who follow Larry Kudlow, Don Luskin, IBD, and "Donnie Baseball."
(Incidentally, IMHO Krugman is to economics and markets what Juan Cole is to Islamic terrorism... only without the charm.)
Posted by: Bat One at February 2, 2006 10:14 PM
Not really: Krugman once had credibility as an economist. Eventually, his ideology began to trump his intellect.
That is a good idea, adding in the source of news. But the problem is that there wasn't much alternative media before Clinton's election, and there's a clear partisan difference from the beginning of that period, so the effect may only be partial. (There may still be an effect: the gap is much wider now.)
Posted by: Jeff Medcalf ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.caerdroia.org/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 2, 2006 10:41 PM