New York Times Report on October Jobs and Unemployment Shows Conservative Bias

Forget Liberal Bias, Democrats Will Take Plain Old Objectivity

The Labor Department released the October job creation and unemployment report, and revised earlier reports.  The news was not great, but 104,000 private sector jobs were created, the unemployment rate fell from 9.1% to 9% and previous job reports were revised upward to show higher job creation than had previously been reported.

This report continued to show that the U. S. economy was largely stagnant, experiencing very low growth, but growth nonetheless.  The report in the New York Time did not present that picture.  Here is the headline

Report Shows a Mere 80,000 Jobs Added in U.S. in October

And here is the lead paragraph

The United States had another month of mediocre job growth in October, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Looking behind the numbers one finds that the private sector gained over 100,000 jobs while government at all levels continued to reduce employment. Now this is not the recovery everyone wanted but it is not yet a slide back into recession and the jobs growth was not "mediocre".  Lost in all of the reporting is a real story, that government which is supposed to be helping the economy is now the primary sector of job losses.  Exactly how that helps an economic recovery has never been made clear but it is Republican policy so don't expect news reports to blame "mediocre" results on Republicans. 

The Washington Post, which had been leading the New York Times in the race to appease the un-appeasable Conservatives had this as their lead paragraph,

The jobs crisis may be easing slightly on the strength of a fourth straight month of modest hiring and a dip in the unemployment rate.

which is probably a better, more accurate summary of the situation. 

Even the Wall Street Journal’s report was neutral, as it started with this statement

U.S. companies kept adding workers to their payrolls in October, and data for the previous two months were revised higher, but the gains made only a small dent in the high unemployment rate.

which was also a more accurate depiction than the Times.

Note to The New York Times:  It doesn’t matter how hard  you pander to conservatives, they are still going to accuse you of liberal bias whenever you factually report news that does not flatter the conservative cause.  So you might as well report objectively, and try to retain the respect and admiration of the rest of the population.