Fox News today — in an indefensible headline splashed across their front page — is suggesting President Obama or his administration cooked the books because the unemployment numbers were extremely encouraging. “The jobless rate,” as even Fox News was forced to report, “fell below 8 percent for the first time in nearly four years.” The jobless rate fell three-tenths of a percent to 7.8%.
Fox News then reported:
The data even elicited a conspiracy theory from former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, who tweeted: “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers.”
Talking Point Memo adds:
CNBC’s Rick Santelli criticized Jack Welch for his tweet launching a raft of conspiracy theories about the latest jobs report Friday — but he didn’t distance himself from conservative skepticsm of unemployment below eight percent for the first time since 2009.
“I would never send a tweet like jack welch and i respect jack. He’s a great guy,” Santelli said. “That’s why last month, I said that it would be below 8% right before the election. That’s why I said it. I don’t say things I can’t prove, that was my prediction. I will leave it at that.”
The CNBC commentator said belief that politics are behind the new report is common among the financial set.
“I can’t prove that it was fudged,” Santelli said. “I do find that that’s the common question on the trading floor. It is what it is.”
Santelli has been named the Godfather of the Tea Party — it was his February, 2009 live, on-air rant about the possibility of the federal government helping underwater mortgage owners that sparked the astroturf “movement.”
Fox News has been at the center of suggesting dozens of polls that find President Obama ahead of Mitt Romney are just illegitimate. Fox is also home to birther conspiracy theorists.
Fox News, in fact, has time and time again been exposed for unethical “reporting.” This week, Media Matters reported that in “70 percent of op-eds written by Mitt Romney advisers, The Wall Street Journal failed to disclose the writer’s connections to the Romney campaign, according to a Media Matters study. The Journal has published 23 op-eds in which a writer’s Romney ties were not identified, and just 10 in which they were.”
Also this week on Fox News, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson teamed up to whip themselves into a frenzy over a 2007 Obama video that everyone saw in 2007, which the Fox News crew used to claim Obama is a racist.
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