Unemployed in America
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The unemployment figures were so bad Friday—half a million U.S. jobs lost in one month—some in the corporate media actually sounded a bit alarmed. Still, the overriding impulse of mainstream journalists is to look on the bright side.
Like NPR, for instance, which offers a handy chart showing how unemployment was worse in the early 1980s than it is now. The chart’s cutsy title: “In Case It Makes You Feel Better,” begs an answer, such as: You gotta be kidding?
Such “things could always be worse” journalism—like yeah, a plague of locusts could be in my backyard—is pretty tiresome, but imagine how it must sound to those who really are suffering from job loss?
