@mammaquiet - Yeah, I agree with you about Fox News. Although I think even the news era of Cronkite and Brinkley had very serious problems, at least it was more serious than news that exists today.

With regard to Balloon Boy, it’s not that I’m saying it shouldn’t have gotten any coverage.  It’s a human interest story and I can see why people were interested. It should definitely have gotten local news coverage and maybe even some national coverage. But the crazy like ten minute update coverage it received got excessive. Worse, after the boy was found, the coverage didn’t decrease, it increased. And we got a rather sick run of talk show appearances of the family involved an experience I suspect was more torturous for the children than being stuck in the balloon would have been. And then when people started to suspect it was hoax, coverage increased even more.  All without an once of contrition on the part of the journalists involved. Not a single one was willing to admit or apologize for their role in promoting this hoax or the fact that they were capitalizing on other people’s misfortune.  The news industry was complicit in this hoax. They tried to create a “feel good” story solely for ratings. And when the hoax was revealed they patted themselves on the back for having “broke” the story. Ridiculous.

Maybe this would be ok if balloon boy was the only thing interesting happening in the world. If we lived in a war-less, poverty-less, stryfe-less world of perfect equality and environmental stability then sure then I can see balloon boy mattering most.  But in this world, yeah it definitely deserved to be a story, but it should never have been a lead and some networks and programs should have had better things to do.

@buckeyegirl31 - I’m split on the White House’s decision to call them out. On the one hand I think it’s generally wrong for the Whtie House to get involved in news and even stating their opinion can have a negative impact. On the other hand there were numerous cases where the Bush White House did the same and much worse actually working to silence and spy on journalists and threatening to prosecute them when they didn’t adhere to the message. The Obama administration just called Fox News names. And yeah that’s crass, but the coverage Fox News has provided of the Obama administration is even more crass. In fact in many cases it lies with impunity.

But still, the Obama Administration should try to rise above them. And I think for months they did. Now they’ve decided to try pushing back. I don’t know if it’s the right decision in the long run. But I do know when you’re being bullied, it may be best to walk away, but there’s gotta come a time when you fight back.  Still, it’s not like the Obama administration is some weakly kid. They have TONS of power, and once they get into the habit of using that power to cope with critics they don’t like things can go downhill very fast from there.  Luckily I think that kind of a worry is very far off. As with so much that the Obama Administration does, in this case all they’ve done is say words. It doesn’t change the balance of power in any substantive way.

@soccerdadforlife - The unemployment rate numbers were released at the beginning of the month. I only included news from the last two weeks as I specified.

Health Care and Energy are two of the biggest industries in the country and they are the areas most likely to drive job creation in both the immediate and long term future. Given that legislation focused on Health Care and Climate Change are not “fiddling around the edges” but directly pertinent to the very problem of  unemployment you identify.

But for short term relief, I also left out debate about the extension of unemployment benefits for those about to run out that has been happening on the hill. And likewise the debate over the extension of the $8,000 new house buying credit. Both of those provisions are likely to become law very soon.

I also left out another important news story: the report that came out showing that 30,000 jobs have been created or saved through direct Federal contracts created using part of the $173 billion dollars out of the $787 billion dollar Stimulus package that has been spent so far.  An indication both that the stimulus has had an impact and needs to be spent faster and more directly toward creating jobs.

All this just goes to show how very much news there is out there to cover that is more important than balloon boy.

@soccerdadforlife - Trust me if there is an error in this it is in me and not in my “limited” choice of news sources. 

However, Jobless Claims numbers in fact come out EVERY week. As the calendar link you sent shows, Thursday always has a reference for Jobless claims which details week by week statistics  and a running 4 week average. Thursday’s numbers show a higher than expected amount of claims and a revised upward number for the previous week as well. But the overall four week average edged slightly downward.

What did come out recently in the past week was the State by State breakdown of unemployment plus revisions of the monthly unemployment numbers that came out the first week of October.  Here are the release schedules:
http://www.bls.gov/lau/lausched.htm
http://www.bls.gov/schedule/news_release/empsit.htm

The state by state breakdown was scheduled to come out October 21st. And it was covered in at least one of the news sources I follow, democracy_now under the headline of “Unemployment Rises in 23 States”.  That I didn’t include it in the above list was simply my mistake.

The unemployment rate stands at a horrible 9.7%. I agree it’s a huge problem. And there are numerous stories all over the alternative press about this number and the “real unemployment” rate estimates numerous economists compile. There’s also statistics that include UNDER-employment that are even more disturbing. But unemployment only rose 0.1% last month.  And it’s been well over 9% since May.  I can begrudge the news media for not harping on this story too much over the last two weeks. It’s a big deal, no doubt, and it’ll be covered in depth when the rate breeches the 10% barrier, but it’s ok not to make it the focus of the attention when there are other important news stories to cover for a week or two. That being said, certainly covering  unemployment again would have been a much better use of their time than balloon boy for the thousandth time.

As for the 30,000 Jobs, I completely agree that it is a small number in the grand scheme of thing. Indeed, I think it’s a rather pointless number to report. It doesn’t cover *most* of the impact of the stimulus at all. For example part of the stimulus went directly to a tax break in everyone’s payroll tax, giving us a tiny amount of additional money to spend every paycheck. That translates into more purchases that saves jobs. But it’s difficult to impossible to measure how many jobs. Likewise part of the stimulus went to extended COBRA benefits for health insurance for people who lost jobs. That directly translates to jobs in health care. Again, hard to measure.  Likewise it doesn’t include increased money for Pell Grants, for food stamps, or direct tax breaks for businesses. Basically the 30K Jobs includes ONLY Jobs saved by direct contracts, like for things like high speed rail construction or highway repair, or additional police foces, or for medical I.T. improvement.  But it doesn’t include any INDIRECTLY created or saved jobs from the Stimulus.

Because of that the 30K Jobs number is meaningless. Basically it’s just a number for politicians to fight about. Some can say “See! Look how many jobs we created!” whereas others can say “See! Look how pathetically inadequate your stimulus was!”  But in the grand scheme of things it means very little in terms of measuring the real economic impact of the Stimulus.

Many economists believe that the Stimulus did slow the trajectory of job loss in a real and meaningful way. However, virtually all economists are united in their belief that it has not really fixed the problem and the unemployment rate continues to drop. Where the split lies in, is of course what to else to do in additional to the stimulus to have a meaningful effect. Some say we need more stimulus. Some way we need WAAAY more stimulus. Some say simply spend the existing stimulus faster. Some say shift the focus of the stimulus. Some say just let everything alone and let the economic  fix itself in time. Some say try a whole different strategy like a complete payroll tax memorandum, or a corporate income tax memorandum.  In other words… nobody knows.

And yes Congress is as ineffectual here as they are with most things. I’d say it’s an amazing thing that we even got one Stimulus bill passed and even that required a number of concessions to corporate interests. To do something else will require some considerable rebranding or hiding it amongst other bills.  Which is why I think both health care reform and cap n trade and indeed defense appropriation as well include considerable subsidies that many in Congress believe will greatly help stimulate the job market.  On the other hand they also increase regulations which some economists believe will end up having the opposite effect. In either case the effects are not immediate but some time down the line. They won’t effect employment very much right now.

But I expect as unemployment gets higher the hue and cry for real immediate change of policy will get loud enough that Congress will finally be compelled to make drastic changes that will see real employment gains. The reality is people are suffering but they are suffering more or less silently right now. There is no grass roots movement really dedicated to issues with employment and  the economy.

Rather the people are split arguing about Death Panels and Nobel Prizes and Kenyan Citizenship. While their attention is distracted with boys in balloons.

Until that changes, I wouldn’t expect Congress to be compelled to do anything more than what they are doing about unemployment, which is a wait and see if the stimulus works approach. However, I have no problem with them in the mean time focusing on other longer term crises like global warming and health care and financial regulation reform. Those are all incredibly important too. Just so long as once the people make it clear that more needs to be done to combat unemployment they do so with alacrity.