Open Thread: Another Dismal Jobs Number

July 6th, 2012 10:39 AM

Today's starter topic: The unemployment rate is continuing to hold steady as the economy seems to be stagnating. Just 80,000 jobs nationwide were created in June.

While headlines like this will make it onto conservative blogs, they aren't likely to create a big splash in big media outlets dominated by liberals. As NewsBusters has noted, the media were overwhelmingly negative about an unemployment rate of 5.4 percent when George W. Bush was president. A direct comparison of unemployment rates from Ronald Reagan's first term and Barack Obama's term has yielded similar liberal bias about joblessness.

Given that the media are less likely to spread negative news about the economy under a Democratic president than they are under a Republican, will this fact be enough to protect Obama from people's own direct observations of unemployment?