The Senate Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell, makes the mistake of granting an interview to Yahoo! News, which, rather than reporting on what he said in the interview, disagrees with it, and more or less tells readers that they should disagree, too:
McConnell claimed Wednesday that the president's plan to use the government to help boost the economy was a failure and that the economy has been "tepid for four straight years."
"Most of what he's done hasn't worked," McConnell said.
That claim conflicts with data showing that under Obama the economy has added jobs and corporate profits have grown, and with other positive factors that show an economy in a slow but gradual recovery despite a slight contraction in the gross domestic product in the fourth quarter of 2012.
If a politician says something in an interview that genuinely conflicts with data, it's definitely a reporter's job to point that out. But Yahoo! News here goes well beyond that, offering instead its own unsubstantiated claim that growth in jobs and in corporate profits under President Obama is the result of what President Obama has done, which the article asserts has worked. It's not even accurate, on a net basis, that the economy has added jobs under President Obama. The Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll survey shows that the economy has fewer jobs now than it did when Mr. Obama took office.
It'd be one thing if, sitting in the interview, the reporters wanted to ask Senator McConnell a follow-up question, such as, "Well, how can you say what Obama has done hasn't worked when the economy has been adding jobs and corporate profits have grown?" Mr. McConnell might reply, "Well, that's because of the business cycle, or because Republicans took over the House and extended the Bush tax cuts, or in spite of Obama rather than because of Obama, and anyway there are still fewer jobs now than when Mr. Obama took office." But instead the Yahoo! News reporters just offer the White House spin in their own meant-to-be-authoritative voice in the article.
