February 3, 2013

Media Matters Pushes Flawed Spending Study

By Kavon W. Nikrad
On January 29, purported media watchdog Media Matters reported on a study the organization did on 273 cable news segments regarding the debt ceiling debate throughout the first three weeks of January. Unfortunately, the results of the study, as well as Media Matters' reporting on the study, have significant flaws in their representation of actual economic, deficit, and debt data and projections for the federal government. Media Matters reports "the Great Recession triggered massively higher counter-cyclical spending, some of which was automatic for things like jobless benefits and food stamps, and some spending that was newly enacted to buoy a collapsing economy." The insinuation is that spending will drop as the economy improves. However, this insistence ignores two facts about the recession and federal spending since the recession started: First, the recession officially ended in June 2009. "Counter-cyclical spending" should have ended with the recession, if it was truly designed to...(Read Full Article)