Editorial Decisions

Gerald Seib made one typical of the NLMSM in his Monday op-ed.  He opened his piece with this, and he went on from there.

Let’s imagine for a moment a parallel universe in which President Trump last week didn’t call a onetime top female aide a “dog….”

In that parallel universe, which of these other stories might have gotten more attention?

  • A Commerce Department report on booming sales in grocery stores, restaurants and department stores
  • The largest one-day rise in the stock market in four months
  • The approval by Mr Trump’s own Food and Drug Administration of a lifesaving generic version of the EpiPen injector device for allergic reactions
  • The resumption of trade talks with Chinese officials who increasingly appear shaken by the Trump administration’s tough actions.

Probably, all of them would have gotten more attention.

Let’s understand one thing very clearly. It’s entirely Seib’s editorial choice and that of his fellow journalists to talk about side issues instead of serious ones, matters like those in his list above that he’s confessed to freely ignoring in favor of tabloid claptrap. Blaming these editorial decisions on the man the NLMSM is so anxious to disparage is an illustration of the general dishonesty of the NLMSM.

Criticize or praise his policies to a journalist’s heart’s content—and there’s much to critique from both sides of his policies—that’s an op-ed journalist’s job.  Deciding to ignore those policies is not.

Oh, and one more thing.  For good or ill, Trump calls everyone “dog.” Seib and his fellow journalists are the only ones making a big deal about a particular person’s gender. His and their rank sexism stinks.

Interesting Graph

A recent Wall Street Journal article concerned the duration and potential durability of our current stock market bull run.  The bull has lasted

3,453 days since the S&P 500 hit its low of 666 on March 9, 2009. Since then, the broadest US blue-chip index has more than quadrupled in price terms….

What’s interesting to me, though, is this graph that was presented early in the piece.

Notice the gray line, which represents the Shanghai Composite Index.  The People’s Republic of China’s index representing the PRC’s stock market, such as it is, bottomed out some months earlier than did our market and those of Europe (Stoxx) and Japan (Nikkei)—and since then it has never really recovered, rising only slightly since that bottom.

It would seem (preaching to the choir, perhaps) that government manipulation of an economy doesn’t work very well—not even when it’s done by the smartest folks in the PRC room.