Network economics coverage is expanding, but is it better?
When Washington journalists were polled in 1979, the economics beat ranked a lowly eleventh in prestige among 13 categories of reporting. Today it is a prime assignment, especially in television, where the world of budgets and finance was long written off as hopelessly dull and nonvisual. Since the beginning of 1980, the number of network reporters and commentators covering economics news has increased from five to nine. The surge in status should not be surprising: economics has become hot politics and important news. The most dramatic battles on Capitol Hill during the Reagan Administration have involved taxes and budgets. In the view of many journalists, the President has asked to be judged primarily on his stewardship of the economy. Says CBS News Vice President Edward Joyce: "The President called the nation's attention to these issues, as is proved by the very prevalence of the word Reaganomics."
For all their enthusiasm, the network news staffs still have a hard time telling an economics story except in terms of its impact on individuals. Further, they often fail to recognize that their propensity for human interest, and seemingly for bad news more than good, can have unintended political consequences. Which story more truly reveals the state of the economy and the performance of Reaganomics: the drop in inflation from 12.4% in 1980, the year before President Reagan took office, to about 5% in 1982, a change that is often conveyed flatly and numerically? Or the simultaneous rise in unemployment from 7.4% to 10.8%, a development that lends itself to anecdotes and dramatic interviews with the jobless?
In March, the President testily questioned whether it was "news that some fellow in South Succotash has just been laid off, that he should be interviewed nationwide?" The networks have continued to say that it was. Among the most persistently critical analysts of Reaganomics is Commentator Bill Moyers of CBS. In April, Moyers reported and narrated a documentary called People Like Us. It portrayed four families as innocent victims of social welfare cuts, despite Reagan's contention that the truly needy were still protected by a "social safety net." White House Communications Director David Gergen angrily charged that the documentary hit "below the belt," and that some of Moyers' examples were misleading. CBS stood by the program, and Moyers has continued to jab at Reaganomics in his Evening News commentaries. In December, for example, he began an analysis with these assertions: "This country is in trouble. People are hurting. The people who govern us acknowledge the dangers, but they continue to act at odds with reality."
Moyers is not the only TV figure to prompt complaints from the Administration. On Election Night, Gergen telephoned CBS White House Correspondent Lesley Stahl to condemn remarks made by her and her colleagues that the results were a referendum on Reaganomics and that it was likely to be "a Democratic night." Ten days later, Reagan complained to conservative Columnist James Kilpatrick that TV coverage of the economy was persistently unfair. Said Kilpatrick, paraphrasing Reagan: "CBS in particular, he remarked, seemed determined to distort the economic picture by excessive concentration on the bad news."