'Job Killer' Claims Usually Go Unsubstantiated: Study

'Job Killer' Claims Usually Go Unsubstantiated: Study

The phrase "job killer" is rarely substantiated when it appears in news stories, according to a study published Thursday morning .

The analysis, conducted by Peter Dreier of Occidental College and Christopher R. Martin of the University of Northern Iowa, examined every occurrence of the phrase or one of its variants, like "kill jobs" or "job-killing," in articles by the Associated Press, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post going back to 1984. Of the 381 stories that contained the phrase -- usually in a source's quote -- fewer than 10 percent substantiated it.

"The news media's chronic lack of fact‐checking has only encouraged ramped up use of the 'job killer' allegation as a political strategy against the Democrats in recent years," the study says.

The study noted that while legacy papers usually didn't bother to look into job-killing claims, other sources occasionally did, like when PolitiFact.com checked out whether the 2010 health care reform law was as "job killing" as Republicans said it was and found the claim false .

"There have been efforts to try to undermine any kind of fact checking," Martin said in an interview, noting that the phenomenon makes him lose hope for investigative journalism.

Dreier and Martin found the phrase pops up more frequently during elections and Democratic presidential administrations, with more than half of all mentions in the period studied occurring during Barack Obama's presidency. It is most frequently used by conservatives and business interests and is typically aimed at Democratic policies that would raise taxes or beef up environmental and consumer protections. The study found no correlation between the use of "job killing" and the national unemployment rate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/1 ... r=Politics

Wow...Another unsubstantiated claim by the usual talking-point robots on the Right... You can hear the surprise in *MY* voice....

Why do you care... the private sector is doing fine. Go water your lawn or something.

How about productivity killers? Due to federal regulation, we had to hire more employees to internally audit procedures, and reduced raises for the rest of the employees. (Anecdotal.)

Remember whenever Obama forced the U.S. auto manufacturers to lay off workers a couple of years ago as a condition of a bailout?

LOL wrote:

Haha