The LA Times Blows It On Inflation

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The LA Times copy desk needs to cool it on the clickbait headlines:

The Fed says inflation is low but you don’t agree. Here’s why you both might be right

The motivation for the accompanying article is a recent poll showing that 44 percent of Americans don’t trust the government’s economic data. This, in turn, is motivated in part by Donald Trump’s insistence that the Fed is keeping interest rates low to help Hillary Clinton despite the specter of massive inflation.

However, the bulk of the article is about the technical difficulties of calculating inflation, which can produce massive differences like these between the two leading inflation indexes for August:

  • CPI: +1.09 percent
  • PCE: +0.96 percent

Obviously somebody is rigging the data here, amirite?

Despite the obvious lack of any chicanery in the inflation figures, the article quotes nutbag Peter Schiff, who insists the government is cooking the books, and “contrarian” David Stockman, who believes he’s come up with a more accurate inflation measure by rejiggering the government’s calculation to give more weight to prices that are going up the fastest. The article also mentions that inflation might be higher in one city than another, and that sometimes inflation seems higher than it is due a rise in a very visible product like gasoline.

But nowhere in the article does it say flatly that the conspiracy theorists are wrong, and inflation is what it is. It reads more like a he-said-she-said account of whether the government is playing fair. And the headline just reinforces that. This is not good journalism

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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