1. Lesson Module 2
HOW DOES THE MEDIA AFFECT THE PUBLIC
PERCEPTION OF THE ECONOMY?

2. Learning Objectives
 How closely related are public evaluations of the
economy to the news coverage of the economy?
 How does the way the media covers the economy
reflect real economic conditions?
 Does the media follow both positive and negative
economic conditions evenly?
 Why does the media cover the economy in the biased
way it does?

3. How closely related are public evaluations of the
economy to the news coverage of the economy?
 Citizens are more concerned with the economic
future rather than the economic past.
 Even though the information is widely available,
many citizens don’t know much at all about true
economic conditions. Their ability to analyze
economic information given to them is questionable.
 This makes citizens extremely impressionable when
the media talks about the economy.

4. How closely related are public evaluations of the
economy to the news coverage of the economy?
 "Without trying, the public is exposed to the best
information about the economic future that exists.
Merely by noting that most forecasters say good
(bad) times are ahead, the public becomes subject to
the causal influence of the professionals' more
esoteric tools."

5. How does the way the media covers the economy
reflect real economic conditions?
 Research shows that the media tends to emphasize
negative economic news.
 This makes the public pessimistic about future
economic conditions.
 Republicans claim that this hurt the Bush reelection
campaign.

6. Does the media follow both positive and negative
economic conditions evenly?
 The media does not completely leave out positive
economic news, it is included a lot of the time.
 Robert Goidel and his team collected 95 articles and
analyzed them. His team concluded that media
coverage of the economy does reflect real economic
conditions to a certain point.
 A huge difference is that negative changes in the
economy are emphasized a lot more than positive
changes in the economy.

7. Does the media follow both positive and negative
economic conditions evenly?
 This emphasis of negative changes in the economy
makes the public more pessimistic about their
futures.

8. Why does the media cover the economy in the
biased way it does?
 It appears that during the 1992 election, the media
overemphasized the negative news about the
economy.
 The Bush administration repeatedly claimed that the
media was focusing a lot more on the negative
aspects and not the positive aspects.

9. Why does the media cover the economy in the
biased way it does?
 Is this true?
 Well according to the research done by Goidel and
his team, it appears Bush received 30 more negative
news articles then he would have if the articles were
written based solely on economic conditions.
 Why is this?
 It is not clear, maybe possible liberal bias.