The Glorious 5-Year Plan is On Schedule.

James Taranto offers this pithy observation about economic news reporting during a Democrat administration:

When a Democrat is in the White House, media coverage of the economy tends to be a lagging indicator of bad news and a leading indicator of good news--which is another way of saying that, as we noted yesterday, reporters' usual approach can be summed up as "always look on the bright side of life."

And:

Things must be really getting bad, because the lagging indicator seems to be catching up. In yesterday's column we analyzed a dispatch by Christopher Rugaber of the Associated Press that previewed today's jobs report and tried to explain away the expected bad news. Later yesterday, though, Rugaber filed another dispatch that was far dourer, including its title, "Evidence Mounts That Recovery Is Hitting the Skids."


Rugaber weighs in again today with a story on the actual jobless numbers, and his mood hadn't improved overnight. The title gave the bad news first: "Payrolls Drop by 125K, Jobless Rate Falls." The story, too, begins with the bad news, and swiftly explains why the good news isn't so good.

And:

Neither dispatch uses the phrase "jobless recovery," which was a staple of economic coverage during the Bush years--even though, before the last few months of 2008, unemployment seldom topped 6%.

Overstating bad news can depress the economy.  Overstating the good news in the face of the common experience to the contrary can lead to the sense that "we are being lied to" and "what else don't they want us to know."