Betsy Newmark guest blogs for Malkin

This is your basic delightful surprise – when I clicked on Michelle Malkin today, I found Betsy Newmark who is doing a turn guest blogging for Michelle. She has a terrific post up on how the msm is Badmouthing the Economy, which is a subject I’m thrilled to see someone writing about. I had posted a little something on the subject here but I know my limitations. Betsy has included breakdowns on just how negatively the press has reported on the economy over the last 4 years (hint: remember how the confetti got thrown every week when Clinton was in office? They’ ain’t throwin’ confetti, even when there is cause to.)

Betsy writes: I’m not saying that the reporters get together and say, “Hey, a Bush is president; let’s convince everyone that the economy is doing terribly.” But that is the template through which they view the news. They don’t look at economic results as a point on a graph but as part of an overall story about where the economy is headed. And they have made up their minds that policies such as tax cuts will trash the economy. So, they’re ready with the gloom and doom.

I think she is probably right-on, and it is a problem within the very culture of the fourth estate, these days: “news” is no longer what is actually happening in the world, but how information may be framed to present a particular narrative. Aside from the fact that the press is destroying its own credibility by playing with frames, it is making the very serious issues this president is trying to deal with that much more difficult. When the press has decided “Iraq War bad” and therefore uses only negative frames to cover the story, they depress the American public and give encouragement to the enemy. When they decide “Bush Tax Cuts Bad” and therefore use only negative frames and the everpresent “but” to soften good news, they do their own countrymen a disservice.

And of course, “framing” for the positive also has its destructive results. All of the “happy-happy-joy-joy-peace-dividend” foreign policy framing of the news in the 1990’s didn’t quite prepare anyone for the reality of a 21st century beset by terrorism which had gone unaddressed for too long. But hey…the frame was “longest peacetime prosperity, yadda yadda…” Peace needed to be redefined as “a terror attack every couple years, that needn’t be addressed, yeah, some people are dead, but they’re in Nairobi and Tanzania, or they’re sailors ‘way over there in Yemen…three day news cycle, a bit lip and the party continues…”

The press needs to STOP framing and get back to actually reporting news. It would do the world a world of good.

In the meantime, keep checking in at MichelleMalkin.com to read Betsy, who has, even as I tapped out this post, added another, this time on Sen. Akaka’s odd bill. Keep scrolling down for her economics piece.

If you are unfamiliar with Ms. Newmark (and I don’t see how that can be if you stop in here with any regularity) her normal home is here.

UPDATE: Lorie Byrd, linking to Betsy, recalls that she too has been wondering Why Do Most Americans Not Realize The Economy Is In Good Shape?. Now we know! :-)

Lorie, btw, will be taking over guest-blogging duties for Michelle starting tomorrow night.