The Associated Press and the Reuters News Service reported on the exact same manufacturing report today. The contrast in headlines is amusing. The AP headline portrayed the news as positive with the headline, "New orders boost manufacturing in Nov.", while the Reuters headline had a negative spin. "Manufacturing sector growth slipped in Nov: ISM" What is the best take on the manufacturing data? I think a balanced spin-free summary is given by Norbert Ore, chairman of the ISM Manufacturing Business Survey Committee. He is quoted towards the bottom of the aforementioned Reuters article.
"The news coming out of the financial sector is all gloom and doom but manufacturing is holding its own pretty well,"
"Manufacturing is at a fairly high level. Supply and demand is strong in most sectors. But we're kind of plateauing there,"
"We did see a change in employment and we'll have to see if that's a continuing trend toward lower employment in manufacturing. But given some of the other concerns in the economy, manufacturing is doing well,"
3 comments:
December 3, 2007 at 12:04 PM
what is it about the consumers of media that demand bad news to such a degree that the media will spin so heavily negative?
December 3, 2007 at 6:05 PM
December 3, 2007 at 6:06 PM
I am not sure if it is consumer demand or journalistic bias. One theory is that fear sells and gets eyeballs. The other theory is that the media wants Bush to look bad going into an election year so they down talk the economy. With 2/3 of our economic activity in consumer spending, a recession can actually be manufactured just by fear mongering. In this instance, it is interesting how AP didn't feel the need for negative spin and Reuters did.
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