Topic: Media Research Center
An Oct. 8 MRC Business & Media Institute article by Julia Seymour promoted how the latest government numbers show "a loss of 95,000 jobs in September, and an additional 15,000 losses in July and August and an unemployment rate still at 9.6 percent." But Seymour obscures the facts behind those numbers.
While Seymour noted that 64,000 private sector jobs were added in September, she didn't mention one number that you'd think would please the anti-government types at the MRC: As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, government jobs were reduced by 159,000, half of those temporary Census workers.
Are Seymour and her BMI overlords suddenly big fans of government employment now that it can be used as a cudgel against a Democratic president? It appears so.
Seymour also reported that according to Gallup, "the unemployment rate is actually much higher at 10.1 percent." Near as we can tell, this is the first time BMI has embraced the Gallup number.
Why? Because as Media Matters details, for most of the summer, Gallup's unemployment rate was actually lower than the government number -- as low as 8.9 pecent at the beginning of August. Reporting that would have interfered with BMI's anti-Obama narrative.
