The Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber had a very bad day on Thursday as he covered the government's June jobs report, but it was all self-inflicted.
I noted much of the problem in a NewsBusters post yesterday, citing how the AP economics writer got badly burned while engaging in the wire service's usual practice of analyzing expected and reported economic results instead of concentrating on relaying the facts. But there's more.
Ahead of the government's report, Rugaber claimed that it would that it would "likely" show that the job market "is nearing full health."
He stuck to his guns in the first paragraph of the story he filed shortly after the report was released, claiming that the job market is "moving close to full health," despite acknowledging clear weaknesses in two paragraphs which followed. The first paragraph's unsupportable take on things appeared to designed to ensure that "good news" reports would emanate from online outlets, email alerts and AP-subscribing broadcasters across the nation.
A mere half-hour after his initial post-release report, Rugaber began to reverse field. Now the very same government report which showed that the job market was "moving close to full health" at 8:39 a.m. was "paint(ing) a mixed picture" at 9:12 a.m.
Thanks to the AP's annoying (and keister-covering) practice of sending older reports down the memory hole once they've been updated or revised, I didn't know until this morning when I stumbled across it at a non-AP site that Rugaber downgraded his evaluation of the results and their potential impact again late Thursday afternoon.
