Mainstream media news broadcasts have been mostly silent on the stock market’s historical milestones that have occurred during the first few months of the Trump presidency.
Mainstream media television outlets have largely ignored the success that the financial markets have seen during the first several months of the Trump presidency. The 30th closing record of the Trump presidency occurred on July 31 when the Dow Jones closed at 21,891, leading to speculation that it would make the unprecedented cross over beyond the 22,000 mark.
That evening, all three broadcast evening news programs ignored that significant threshold that the Dow Jones was about to pass through. In fact, ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news programs rarely mentioned the Dow Jones milestones achieved since Trump’s inauguration.
The Media Research Center analyzed network transcripts for ABC, CBS and NBC evening news programs from Jan. 20, through July 31 specifically for the keywords, “dow” or “dow jones” or “dow jones industrial average” or “stocks” or “stock market” or “wall street” or “market rally.”
According to the analysis, the three evening news programs mentioned the stock market, Wall Street, and the Dow Jones 33 times since President Trump’s inauguration, but rarely on the days in which historical milestones were achieved. The analysis revealed that the networks failed to report 25 of the financial milestones on the day on which they took place. During that period, the broadcast news programs only aired 19 positive stories about the stock market.
CNBC’s senior economics reporter Steve Liesman wrote in an August 1 piece that “While most economists say President Donald Trump may be overstating his responsibility for recent better growth and jobs numbers, they say his policies may have had a limited positive influence in some areas.” Liesman added that stock and business confidence may be the result of Trump’s decision to end certain Obama-era regulations.
Despite the positive trends in the financial markets, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi argues that it’s too soon to tell if President Trump and his policies are having a positive effect on the economy. “They have got to raise the debt limit and pass a budget,” Zandi said. “If they don’t do that, it will do real damage.”
Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com
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