Minnesota’s media isn’t telling you the truth about the economy

On September 13, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that:

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 0.1 percent in August on a seasonally adjusted basis after being unchanged in July

So, the inflation rate in August — 0.1% — was higher than the inflation rate in July — 0.0%. it had, in other words, increased.

How did Minnesota’s media report this news?

WCCO tweeted:

Fox 9 ran a story titled ‘Inflation falls for 2nd consecutive month on lower gas prices.’

Neither of these headlines is true. An inflation rate which goes from 0.0% one month to 0.1% the following month has not, under any definition, either “slowed”, as Fox 9 claims, or “fallen,” as WCCO would have you believe.

We could, charitably, describe these headlines as ‘mistakes.’ But mistakes tend to be random, they are as likely to go one way as the other. A striking feature of the ‘mistakes’ of Minnesota’s media is that they all tend to go in the same political direction, as when they passed off misleading DFL talking points on the Inflation Reduction Act (sic) as ‘Fact Checks’ recently.

The Star Tribune‘s recent poll found that 84% of Minnesotans were feeling ‘stress’ resulting from the current high rate of inflation. A recent poll for MPR found that inflation is the top issue for voters in this year’s elections. Minnesotans deserve better than their media’s misinformation.