PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor has become a progressive media darling for her resistance journalism at the White House. Today she interrupted a bill signing to shout a question at the president about the unemployment rate. Here’s the clip:
.@Yamiche: “Black unemployment went up by 0.1%, Asian American unemployment went up by 0.5% how is that a victory?”
President Trump: “You are something else.” pic.twitter.com/1B5IqBNzWz
— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) June 5, 2020
Alcindor put out two tweets about this, one of which has more than 50k likes:
President Trump calls today’s jobs news “a tremendous tribute to equality.” The unemployment rate fell from 1 percent. Black unemployment rate went up by .1%. Asian American unemployment rate went up by .5%.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) June 5, 2020
My Q to President Trump just now: Overall, U.S. unemployment rate fell by 1 %. Black unemployment rate went up .1%. Asian American rate went up by .5%. How is that a victory?
His response to me: “You are something.”
Note: It’s a crucial question.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) June 5, 2020
How is this a victory? Well, let’s let prominent journalist Yamiche Alcindor explain that. Here are some of her previous tweets about the unemployment rate (in reverse chronological order):
“The stock market is booming,” says President Trump.
Context: Since mid-March, some 39 million Americans have filed for unemployment.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) June 3, 2020
President Trump on 20.5 million jobs lost in April and the unemployment rate jumping to 14.7%:
“It’s fully expected. There’s no surprise. Everyone knows that..What I can do is bring it back…Thise jobs will be back.”
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) May 8, 2020
As President Trump talks on Fox News … U.S. unemployment hits 14.7%, highest rate since the Depression, as U.S. shed 20 million jobs in April from the coronavirus outbreak.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) May 8, 2020
More than 3.8 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week, according to the Labor Department.
Roughly 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits in six weeks.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) April 30, 2020
The Labor Department reported more than 5 million new unemployment claims Thursday, hours before President Donald Trump will speak to the U.S. governors on guidelines for reopening the nation’s crippled economy. https://t.co/oLx3HFvWB7
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) April 16, 2020
“My goodness.”
My goodness.
A record 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment last week, a stunning sign of an economic collapse triggered by coronavirus. https://t.co/nq0UaF58Ms
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) April 2, 2020
President Trumps says he doesn’t believe the unemployment rate will hit 20%.
He also isn’t giving details on how much checks to Americans might be though WH officials have said they like the idea of $1,000 checks.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 18, 2020
Bloomberg News is reporting Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told GOP senators that the U.S. could see an unemployment rate of 20%.
20%. https://t.co/ggfZdxED8j
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 17, 2020
So, unemployment has been spiking and Alcindor has been expressing concern about that for months. She’s clearly aware there was concern the rate could go as high as 20 percent. In fact, many people thought that’s what would happen today. The Washington Post had some egg on its face earlier because someone scheduled a tweet in advance about the likelihood of reaching the “grim milestone” of 20% unemployment today. The tweet went out even after the good news about the unexpected drop.
Legitimate lol at the Washington Post tweeting this out over an hour after the jobs report was released showing an unexpected *drop* in the unemployment rate. pic.twitter.com/svSGAybsWt
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) June 5, 2020
Oops! The Post has since tried to recover:
Economists predicted 20 percent employment in May.
How did they get it so wrong? https://t.co/0t8eN1BTU0
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 5, 2020
So, to answer Alcindor’s question, today’s numbers are a victory because instead of reaching a grim milestone, unemployment went down sharply. As for black unemployment specifically, that also could have spiked today by several percent and, thankfully, it barely budged. That’s good news.
All of this should be self-explanatory to any national reporter, especially one given an assignment at the White House. But the problem here isn’t that Yamiche Alcindor doesn’t know this. The problem is that she’s a partisan looking to create a gotcha moment. She’s doing this for all the people who don’t know or don’t care why this was a silly and misleading question. And it worked because PBS is promoting the clip and she got a lot of likes and retweets.
As you can see above, Alcindor has devoted a bunch of tweets to the unemployment rate going up. Where was she when it was going down? Here’s what I found. Back in 2018 when black unemployment rates hit record lows, Alcindor tweeted about it once. She included a caveat:
“African-American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded, and Hispanic American unemployment has also reached the lowest levels in history,” Pres Trump says.
Fact: Unemployment rates among both groups are still significantly higher than whites unemployment rates.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) January 31, 2018
She also tweeted about Trump talking about it earlier this year.
Meanwhile in Milwaukee, President Trump is telling a majority white rally crowd that Republicans “love” black people and that black voters are joining the Republican Party bc of the low African American unemployment rate. https://t.co/J43LjPwFqY
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) January 15, 2020
But if you go way back to the Obama years, she tweeted about drops in unemployment several times without any caveats. Back then it was just good news:
Unemployment claims drop to 5-year low http://t.co/JvNkFFib via @USATODAY
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) January 24, 2013
Headline @USATODAY: Claims for unemployment benefits plunge 30,000 http://t.co/GM2BsLr6
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) October 11, 2012
Headline @USATODAY: September unemployment rate falls to 7.8% http://t.co/HP1NBGox
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) October 5, 2012
I’m using Twitter search to find these. I’m not including all of them and maybe I’m not seeing some tweets at all, but it looks to me like there’s a pattern here. Alcindor has been trumpeting the bad news about the unemployment rate for weeks but had a pretty tepid reaction (at best) to the good news between 2018 and the pandemic. Her question today was nonsensical because today’s outcome was good news given prior expectations.
None of this will matter in the least of Alcindor’s fans because, as we all know, there’s a big market out there for resistance journalism. And the rest of the media, like this CBS News reporter, will just play along with the game.
.@Yamiche asked President Trump about his plan for the future.
“We’re going to have the strongest economy in the world,” he replied.
She then noted African American and Asian American went up slightly and asked how that was a victory.
“You are something,” the president said.
— Grace Segers (@Grace_Segers) June 5, 2020
