A reader has shamed me into updating yesterday's chart showing how often Fox News mentioned inflation after the election was over. Here's a comparison with all TV news:
The drop at Fox News was more dramatic than most, but in fact everyone decided to stop talking about inflation once the election was over. (The mid-month spike is when the November CPI report was published.)
I guess everyone agrees: Inflation is only hurting consumers enough to be newsworthy if there's a political campaign saying so.
POSTSCRIPT: I'd also show you a longer-term comparison, but these numbers are a pain in the butt to collect and I'm too lazy to do it.
"Inflation" was this year's "caravan." With "transgender" coming in strong for second-place as Shiny Media Object We All Forget About After The Election.
Unfortunately, unlike actual transgender people whom we can shove back into the bathroom stalls to pee and poop in quiet shame with those that share* the genitalia they had as a baby, shoving inflation back down will be much harder to do while simultaneously raising tariffs and deporting all the people who do shitty jobs for low wages. Oh well, the libs were owned though, which makes the coming recession worth it.
*Sorry, intersex people. Not sure which toilet Nancy's Genital Inspectors are going to let you use. God doesn't make mistakes, so one of your 2 sets of genitals is obviously entirely your fault for having.
+1
I wonder, if God doesn't make mistakes, why do people say they were born in the wrong body?
Polls asked people different things:
(a) How they were doing financially
(b) How they viewed the economy (inflation, particularly)
Polls showed:
(a) Everything was mostly rosy
(b) Everything was mostly dismal
Which data points formed the narrative? The dismal view. Which became a feedback loop, but nobody knows how everybody else is doing except by listening to the media, who says everything is dismal because polls show everyone thinks the economy is dismal, but that's all anyone hears, and so on.
The echo chamber is so much bigger than Fox, which no doubt plays a prominent role. The NYT, NPR, all of them. They found it very easy to dismiss the reliable data (that people on the whole are doing very well) and offered instead polite versions of the Fox narrative based on skewed data (that everyone thinks the economy is awful).
Media malpractice in the first degree.
Finally, media got around to admitting inflation had come down, but then they moved the goal posts. It's not inflation -- it's high prices! That's why everyone is so sore. (People weren't "so sore." Mostly they were doing fine. That's what they told pollsters but media ignored it, like the good news on employment and wage growth.)
Dems are guilty too for failing to build an effective counter-narrative. They stink at that.
It is truly maddening. The media has absolutely lost it's way. It's as if there is no longer any objective truth - just what Democrats say vs what Republicans say. Naturally, republicans have figured out how to easily game the system by relentlessly working the refs while Democrats fight back by actually trying to engage the subject with numbers. Once you realize that you can take any position you want and all opposition will just be portrayed as partisan he-said/she-said, the game is basically over. Republicans took this to the logical extreme by embracing criminality at the party level, so even prosecution of criminal behavior can be waved away as nothing more than partisan attacks. I don't see how we come back from that without first hitting rock bottom.
They also spent some time trying to debunk the good jobs reports by finding random people having a tough time getting a job.
Weird observation. For *reasons* I went out today before dawn to do my grocery shopping. I got gas for 2.85/gal which is the lowest I've seen it here since I moved here last year. Several stations had it at that price. Then I went back out after lunch-- and gas was back up at $3.19. How the frack can prices jump that much in just a few hours?
Suppose you go out again before dawn and see what the gas price is. It could very well vary based on the time of day. I wouldn't put it past anyone to do so.
It's worse than you wrote. FOX "News" immediately realized that it needed to STFU about inflation while it could. Others "analyzed" why voters talked about inflation, then shut up about it.
One thing I'd like to see is the absolute number of inflation stories. If Fox was running 100/day and all media was 105/day then the percentage drop isn't telling the whole story.