My friend who covers the New York Times for Power Line sent me this report on how that paper is covering (or not) America’s supply chain crisis. His report is from Tuesday of this week
I’ve been watching to see how NYT would handle the supply chain crisis. For nearly a week, it’s run not a single story on the topic. The exception was a piece on the sniping between conservatives and Pete Buttigieg over his parental leave. That article did use the phrase, “supply chain crisis” in passing. So, the Times admits there’s a crisis, but it doesn’t want to cover it.
Today [Tuesday], however, the Times took on the inflation and supply chain crisis, although without ever mentioning either directly. A front page above the fold article explained why “Economic Gains Hobbled As Labor Market Shrinks.”
The article does its best to take on the conservative claim that Biden and the Democrats have given so much in unemployment benefits that few are now returning to work. Ben Cassleman dismisses this argument because “evidence from states that ended the payments early suggests that any impact was small.”
Yet the article goes on to argue that workers are staying home because they’ve saved up money “thanks to the government’s multi-trillion-dollar response to the pandemic.” It goes on to cite economists who predict that more people will return to work as they “deplete their savings.”
The obvious conclusion is that overly generous unemployment benefits have indeed stifled the recovery. States that ended benefits early saw a relatively small labor market recovery because of savings from federal benefits built up during the pandemic. The Times even tells the story of a woman who made more in unemployment benefits during the pandemic than she earned in salary when she was on the job.
Despite the Times’s effort to fudge the issue, its own account confirms that Biden and the Democrats bear a significant share of responsibility for both inflation and the supply chain crisis, issues that NYT remains reluctant to report on by name.
The Biden administration characterizes the supply chain crisis as a serious problem only for rich people. If this were so (and obviously it isn’t), the Times might be more inclined to cover the matter, for the sake of its upscale readers.
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