Wednesday, August 1, 2007

MSM Doublespeak


This is a semi-irrelevant story, but it demonstrates how the liberal MSM twists words to distort the views of the unknowing masses.

Having a degree in economics, I'm somewhat familiar with terminology used to describe economic activity. "Wages"describes the amount employers pay employees to perform their work. Typically "wages" refers to all costs associated with employing an employee, but sometimes the categories are considered separately: wages, benefits, overhead, etc. "Employment Costs" are how the BLS (Beureau of Labor Statistics) describes the total cost of employment from the employers' side.

Everyone knows "wages" and "benefits" are good. Everyone knows "costs" are bad. So how does the Associated Press report the good news of increasing wages and benefits in America when a Republican is President? Naturally, higher pay for working Americans are reported as "rising employment costs." On the other hand, when wages decrease, the "employment costs" don't go down. Rather, wages are "cut," "slashed," "lost," etc. Thus, the MSM is "accurately" able to report good news or all bad news at all times depending on whether they like the guy getting the credit. While this doublespeak is clearly effective, it is also clearly deceptive. And in my view, unethical.

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