President Biden urged the media to adopt a more positive tone regarding U.S. inflation rates, which have hit their lowest level in three years.
During the inaugural Creator Economy Conference at the White House, he highlighted the effectiveness of his policies in achieving a “soft landing” for the economy and directly requested reporters to reflect this positivity in their coverage.
“Any comment on the inflation numbers? Has the U.S. beat inflation, Mr. President?” one reporter asked.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Biden said. “I told you they’re going to have a soft landing — we’re going to have a soft landing. My policies are working. Start writing that way. Okay?”
“Do you know if he feels that the economic coverage has generally been off or wrong?” CNN’s MJ Lee asked.
In response to Biden’s comments, White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jared Bernstein noted that the president likely perceives the media’s economic reporting as overly negative, which is backed by research indicating a trend toward negative economic coverage.
“That’s the first I’ve heard that he said that [‘Start writing that way’]. I can only interpret it to mean that he thinks that that’s not being done,” Bernstein said.
“I read a lot of your work and I see stuff I like and stuff that doesn’t resonate with me as much. There’s been some nice research on this over at the Brookings Institute. My former colleague Ben Harris and others have looked at the extent to which reporting has been increasingly negative on the economy and they find — and they’re crunching some real numbers — that that’s been the case,” he said.
He added, “There was another study that I found pretty well — looked to me that it was pretty rigorous, that suggested that the media tends to write about the gas price when it goes north of $3.50 and not when it goes south of $3.50. So the gas prices I looked this morning was I think $3.45, and if you haven’t written about it, you know, maybe you want to.”
Biden also made light of the evolving media landscape, joking about the differences in information consumption between generations, particularly among his grandchildren.
“Now, is that the real press or the fake press back there? That was a joke. That was a joke,” Biden said. “I tell you what, I have a bunch of grandchildren, and, with all due respect, they don’t read the same newspapers or watch the same television I do. They listen to all of you. They listen to all of you.”
