Don't miss the president of NBC News talking about how she pushed bogus sensationalist coverage about inflation to convince the public they were in economic misery
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What she fails to conceal is her own bias and as a result choose to push a false narrative knowing full well the impact it would have, they aren’t doing journalism only tipping the scale.
Have you ever had to buy more than one of something at a time? I'm asking half-seriously. It's possible that if you live near a well-stocked corner store the thought of buying for a week, two weeks, or longer in one trip is alien to you. And that's what people who don't live in big cities do.
it doesn’t say anything about a grocery store. they’re driving two hours to a bakery, and there’s no way they’re buying enough bread to save a hundred dollars
I'm sorry but you do not know how much you're spending on gas + depreciation if you're valuing 2 hours of driving at $10. You are trying to steelman something that is self evidently stupid.
$10 is wrong but it's still not crazy to drive a long distance to stock up in bulk at lower prices. 120 miles at 25 miles per gallon is about $20. You have to buy a lot of bread to make it worth it, but people in rural areas do this all the time. That's not the problem with the screenshot.
It's a bakery. I'm not sure how much nonparishable food you can buy at a bakery that would fit in the family car. And 2 hrs worth of gas... you have to be buying a LOT of pretty expensive stuff with pretty steep savings to make it worth the trip.
my basic math is that's gotta be at least a couple gallons, with gas apparently ludicrously expensive if it's towards $3 that's three loaves minimum to break even - if you value your time at $0/hr.
More than 17 if you value your time at minimum wage.
It’s not just the time you need to spend. Your car will cost you more than a hundred miles of gas plus depreciation. Average in the U.S. of an honest cost of a car is about 70 cents per mile. If you buy 50 loaves per trip you might come out even. Who takes people serious who operate like that?
So fun story, there’s a Costco in Lincoln that sells bread for a little more than 2.50 a loaf and get this, they also have cheaper gas there. Everything about this story is bullshit
2 hours drive = ~100miles. Say they're driving a car, not a truck, so ~25 mpg. 4 gallons of gas at--let's be generous--$4/gal. So $16 in gas. So, to save $2 net they have to buy 9 loaves of bread.
Now, if you're also buying other stuff, maybe other stores, or you have another reason for the trip? Sure, it's rational. But then you're not "driving two hours to save two dollars on a loaf of bread," you're driving two hours to save a bunch of money on a bunch of stuff.
Okay I looked it up and this piece seems full of puff. The main claim the lady makes is that she can get 5 rolls for $2 vs $2.50 a roll in Lincoln. Fresh Rolls in Los Angeles are 50 cents if not cheaper at most supermarkets
I thought she was coming in from somewhere more rural than Lincoln. but the bread is probably a side trip for several errands, the way I go to trader Joe's after driving 40 min to my haircut.
reminds me of when DC started taxing plastic shopping bags at a nickel a bag in 2010 and some lady told a WaPo reporter she would take the metro to Virginia to go grocery shopping as a result. even for the lowest to-Virginia-and-back fare at the time you could get like 75+ bags at a nickel a pop
And to think they could have done a story pointing out the poor economic thinking that would convince people that it was worth it to drive 100 miles to save $2 on bread.
Incidentally, when I lived in Ukraine right after independence, I saw lots of this. People would run home to get a plastic bag they had bought previously rather than buy a new one
that’s a fucking terrible way to save $2. I want to believe people are not that gullible but come on, man - what is it with these mediafolk and their broken brains?
People are not skeptical that NBC aired that bullshit. The media airs a lot of complete bullshit from right wing "vox pops". CNN aired a story about how a family that purchases 12 galloons of milk a week was feeling the pinch of Bidenomics
Journalists should "stay close" to people who've already been swayed by misinformation, and then report what they do, rather than communicate real information. Huh. I guess it's just that or polls! We are so fucking doomed.
So that suggests petrol price is at a record low, yes?
So why was that not mentioned, as any decent journalist would have done?
JHC talking about leaving yourself wide open. 🤬🙄
I don't think it's a real story. The most charitable explanation is that someone had made the drive for other reasons, saw cheap bread while they were out and about, took it home, and embellished it for a reporter. (Less charitable is that it's entirely made up.) No one drives 2 hours for bread.
I mean it *could* be close to true if "saving $2 on bread" is merely shorthand for "saving a hundred dollars on a car's worth of groceries," but yeah on its face, real dumb.
I would love to believe this but tbh I feel like I've met people who would do that
But then, the right thing to do is not report this as "wow look what they have to do to get by", it's to say "your time should be worth more than 1$/hr"
I believe people from the back country will buy groceries from the big city if they're already there for any of the hundred reasons people go there in the first place.
But I don't believe for a moment that anyone is stupid enough to drive 2 hours round-trip to buy a single loaf of bread.
yeah this is the obvious tell with these stories - for the first 2 years of Biden's Presidency, the cost of gas supposedly crushing people is all of what the media covered!
then once the price of gas tanked over 2 yrs ago - the media just completely stopped speaking about it; even these obviously imaginary stories implicitly assume that price of gas is so ridiculously low that it doesn't factor into the thinking of regular people
Except prices *were* higher due to corporate profiteering, people (sometimes) had bigger numbers in paychecks but almost everyone could buy less, people were suffering, and Biden kept telling them the (corporate) economy was great and they didn't need help. 🤷♂️
The deal is, there's always some metric by which the economy is doing well and some metric by which it's doing poorly. The fact that Republicans had to latch on to inflation, which is always going up no matter who's in office, is an indicator that our economy is actually pretty good right now.
The real pressing economic issue is housing costs but Republicans don't want people thinking too hard about that until they can start selling balloon mortgages again.
Idk i mean the rate of inflation decreased, but, as with anyone who understands, uh, fucking math, the jump from 2020 to now in terms of cost of living, is, like, 20%. So, uh, yeah, the velocity went down, but the direction is still inflating, meaning, that the average person became poorer.
So when we talk about inflation "going down", this on a macro scale makes some sense as to an indicator of a country's economic health, but homelessness is up 18%. There are countless indicators as to why people are worse off. It's asinine to say otherwise. Greedflation, from the extraction >>
>> class, has effectively, fucked the average person. Yes competing with blackstone for housing is bad, but imagine, if you can't even get in the arena, because saving money is impossible. Let's please return to reality.
Honestly, for real this is some draconian bad faith shit. The question "do you feel worse off" is not influenced by if the diminished viewership of NBC actually drank Kool aid, it's based on the fact that a 3% raise year over year means you're poorer than in 2020. >>
>> People screaming that the cost of shit is astronomical, and you vampire hot-take class meeting that with "erm actually the rate at which shit will cost more is back to good levels" is such a disingenuous fallacious reply, because the shit still costs more. >>
>> "erm actually your 3% raise means that you're beating the current rate of inflation by .7%, so in ~10 years you'll finally make up for the financial devaluing that greedflation has placed upon you all. Stop complaining"
Demon haunted world type shit
Which class fucked the working class? The liberal elites in their ivory towers or the pig-rich Republican elites who run every major sector of the economy, and now the government?
The Dems failed to make that stick to the Shit Party.
Those people all go to the same country club, so your answer requires a new common denominator, one that begins with c and ends in lass. It's class warfare, always has been, and the only place where billionaires are legally tried for it is China.
This is such a stupid way to represent the person in the actual story, who didn’t say she drove there just for bread, and probably just comes to ‘town’ periodically for a big shop 🤦🏻♀️
it is performative nonsense to drive 2 hours to “save” $2 on bread. The gas costs more than $2. The fact m that the president of NBC thought it was a good story shows her lack of common sense and decency.
She misinterpreted what was said---it was a 5-second clip of a woman who lives in a tiny rural town who drives into the big city, b/c that's where the high-end, cheap bakery is (along w other stores, for sure).
She's not driving 100 miles, round trip, just to save $2 on bread.
Or, hear me out, they focused on how people feel about everyday economics like groceries and gas because that's what people see. I know I questioned the rosy economic numbers for the exact same reason, and hey, turns out the employment numbers were indeed bogus.
This bish lives in some Manhattan penthouse, I am sure the concerns of the average Omahan don't hang very high in her thoughts usually, despite her protestations.
Guess I would like to see details on the bread story. Average cost of a loaf of bread in Nebraska in 2023 was $2.35 a loaf. So what bakery was selling loaves of bread that would have been $2 cheaper and worth an hour long drive one way to get it. Sounds fishy to me.
The story says that the bakery sells loaves from their on-site factory at $2 for 5 (so 40¢ a loaf) compared to $2.50 for 1 loaf, and if you watch the story people are clearly buying in bulk (2-3 bags full of bread each). They probably make that trip once every couple months
Interesting…they can sell loaves for $0.40 per loaf direct from the factory bakery. Story should have been about the price markup because that isn’t changing next year.
And their story is that Americans are f*cking stupid. The election was plenty of evidence. But 2 hours using gas costs more than $2! Even at 3 or 4 loaves, you lose $ and time!
It's more than gas though. There is wear & tear on the car, and every mile you put on it lowers its resale value--those aren't direct, immediate costs, but they add up.
It's why the current mileage reimbursement rate is 70 cents per mile.
I don’t even get waiting in line 15 minutes to buy slightly cheaper gas at Costco. You’re saving like a dollar a tank, and that’s not wasting hours and putting wear and tear on the car.
It's not for everyone, that's for sure, but for many a visible savings of $3 is more meaningful and a bigger more tangible "win" than a years off, estimated loss in your car's resale value, tire tread, etc.
Same "logic" for why people speed thru red lights to get to a destination 1 min earlier.
It might have been justifiable, had they gone on to explain that our recent round of inflation started under Donald Trump. But no, they were more than happy to let the lie go uncontested and the public misinformed
Baking a loaf of bread at home costs, like, 40 cents. Flour, yeast, a couple oven-proof bowl and KAL’s low-knead recipe, easily available online. It is the laziest baking I do.
We must, MUST reincorporate home ec in education, this is insane.
…and by “insane” I mean “insane that anyone would 1. think this is a genuinely reported story because 2. it is CRAZY-obvious that making bread yourself would save time and money in that scenario”.
So I’m scorching both the story, and the cooking ignorance that made it seem remotely credible.
Someone please find this segment for me, before I convince myself it’s this exec’s fever dream.
I would be EMBARRASSED to report such nonsense out. You can make a tin of sandwich bread in less time! And a BAKERY?! Not just saving $2 at Target, but an aha BAKERY?
Thank you. So basically, it’s people who are probably driving to the Omaha big-box stores anyway, and swing by the cheap bread place while they’re there. Which makes perfect sense.
The exec’s framing, on the other hand, makes me wonder if she understands this isn’t an epic quest for bread.
Yeah, or if it was an epic bread quest, it was just one insane lady. Or even if that lady wasn't insane, it was probably something she tried once, not like... "the norm." There is literally nothing meaningful to be gleaned from this which makes it even more egregious on NBC's part
Groceries, housing, and higher education are astronomical, though. Even plateauing or slightly declining inflation doesn’t mean wages kept up. Can anyone honestly say their grocery costs have decreased in the last decade?
A: did prices increases faster or slower than wages? For example: minimum wage?
B: how much inflation is caused by gargantuan corporations keeping prices at oligopoly/monopoly levels?
C: how much of wage levels is influenced by corporations crushing unions?
Repubs did nothing. Plus, they have no plans to help. They will cut Social Security and Medicare and other programs. Rs like monetary policy meaning hike interest rates.
Trump is a revolting human being.
Trump voters failed the basic test of democracy: don't elect people who will hurt you.
president of NBC news: "this has been the second time in a decade we have rat-fucked a democratic presidential candidate, and we are becoming exceedingly efficient at it."
It's not enough to decrease inflation. Wages must rise to catch up with the price gouging of the last decade. Trump won because of moron dems dismissing workers' concerns about their material conditions. The pain being inflicted on the working class isn't media driven hysteria.
Families experienced a 35% increase in homelessness - that's not imaginary. Maybe the problems aren't the same in your AREA. Prices vary wildly across America, and in rural regions are often lower.
1. I agree with her about the polling limitations
2. Most people are irrational and innumerate
3. I appreciate recent report on how inflation experience varied by income.
I don't know what we do about the obvious lying press.
Nobody does this. This story is not true. It's not true because you don't save $2 driving for a product an extra 2 hours. That's not how spending or math works. Also this isn't 1890 where ppl are limited on bread choices.
They could save a lot more than $2 a loaf by baking bread at home. I wonder why they never thought of that. And it would take less time than the 2 hour round trip
I guess but the point I'm making is that those people aren't real. They don't exist or if they do, they aren't doing what they say and if they are, they don't mean what they say. It's just impossible to save $2 by driving across the state. It's not the "economy" and the people at NBC know that.
My grandmother towards the end would drive around buying only buying things on sale at 4 different grocery stores and spent more money than she saved. These people absolutely exist but it should never be framed as *rational*.
so they did an entire story on how ONE STUPID IGNORANT ASSHOLE WOMAN WHO DIDNT VALUE HER TIME spent two hours to save $2 DOLLARS THIS IS WHAT WE CALL PROPAGANDA AMERICA BY BEZOS WAPO A NATIONAL PUBLICATION
instead of babying these idiotic voters and telling them their concerns are valid, we need to call them stupid to their faces. the cost of driving 2 hours is drastically higher than $2, and if you can’t do that 3rd grade level mathematics it’s a skill issue on your end
The issue is people putting groceries on credit cards for example.
It’s helpful to realize when you’re arguing against a straw man, but I guess reporters helped create that straw man in the first place with dumb reporting. #nbc
Not even a stupid person would do what is asserted. Either key information is missing "when I'm visiting family..." or it's more Jayson Blair. Either way, your subscription is better used elsewhere if this is what is being served.
I think it’s generous to think the President of NBC news is sharp enough to do that math in her head. Many people (I suspect our Supreme Court justices as well) are bad at that basic estimation (it’s the reason for the focus on number sense in common core).
There was one of those NYT roundtables where they put a bunch of slack-jawed "undecideds" together and print their opinions, and one person claimed inflation was so bad that they were spending $100 on breakfast at McDonalds! Absolutely no push back on that at all. Unreal.
Good lord, that lady didn’t say she drove in hours for bread really, she’s probably doing a regular full shop in town - going to Cosco and what not, and stops at the bakery? That’s pretty common for rural folks I think
Yeah, it's not "people in Nebraska" -- it's one woman, who lives in the middle of nowhere.
My strong guess is she goes into the city b/c she's a normal person who is happy to drive 1-hour every once in awhile to get high-quality, cheap goods she can't get in a rural town. Nothing to do w inflation
It's actually a perfect example of how people misunderstand the things they hear about the world. One person doing a kinda weird thing instantly becomes "many people often do this way weirder thing."
...also I'm pretty sure the woman who drove 2 hours for bread, a veteran, recently sold her home for $370k -- almost 75% more than what she bought it for with a VA-backed loan just 9 years ago.
(Google has gotten worse, but it still works when someone happens to sell property)
LOL Nobody in this state does that (unless they're completely unhinged). Two hours would be more than one hundred miles, depending on traffic on the Interstate. That's way past the state capital and out into the rural area in the centre of our state.
The job of the media is to make sure that we know the truth and not just how we feel about things and yet here the media is making sure to promote feelings over facts.
Inflation slowing doesn’t mean shit in the face of double digit cost jumps multiple years running. The damage is done and it will take a decade for wage growth to absorb it
Also inflation never seems to be laid at the feet of republicans by the media. They get into office and screw everything up. We then elect a Democrat who has to spend his entire 4 years cleaning up their mess. Most large media never ever reports the truth anymore. They’re worse than useless.
Sensationalist, sure, but are we really pretending that prices aren't artificially inflating every year while wages have plateaued? "Messaging" isn't going to change what people are actively experiencing every day, it's just going to make you sound disingenuous or like you're trying to gaslight them
I dont see how doing that story was wrong. It’s bananas that people would do that drive for $2 and they reported on that reality. And it’s true, despite the data, that the economy feels bad. None of what she said here is wrong.
Yeah no, also it turns out she described the content of her network's own story falsely, but thanks for showing up this much later to be annoying about it
They drove two fucking hours for cheaper bread? You should be reporting about financial literacy and the idiots that don't have it, not "Oh woe the curdling lifeblood of America, some innumerate idiot in Omaha got a sad. Time for fascism I guess!"
My wife keeps asking how could he have won, and I say, welp, you keep talking about inflation at the grocery, and yet I do the grocery shopping, so what do you think about where do you get your information? (spoiler, she watches NBC, read the WashPost and the NYT)
Two hours round trip means maybe 80 miles conservatively which means at a very conservative 30 cents per mile $24 to save 2. So yeah, that’s like voting for Trump.
Love to spend far more on gasoline than I’m saving on bread to drive two hours from rural Nebraska to a bakery in Omaha, something that definitely happened.
Someone needs to call bullshit on that very obviously false story. Nobody is going to spend $5 on gas and endure two hours on the road to save $2 on bread.
Yep. Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb spent a year telling people every morning that they were experiencing “sky high” and “record” inflation, neither of which were true.
Comments
But people needing to put groceries on credit cards is not imaginary.
Please stop calling people stupid when they legit are feeling poor.
https://bsky.app/profile/amateurexpertop.bsky.social/post/3lekvjirooc2o
More than 17 if you value your time at minimum wage.
Unless your entire family is ducks you don't need this much bread.
So three loaves of bread in a Prius is breaking even if you value your time at zero. It's 12 in a big pickup.
(followup coming)
They don't teach reporting in J school?
That is some weird maga math
https://youtu.be/f3nBL6amYxk?si=QdJiuHW0Nakh0kT1
The bread looks like crap, but I'm not judging.
So why was that not mentioned, as any decent journalist would have done?
JHC talking about leaving yourself wide open. 🤬🙄
But then, the right thing to do is not report this as "wow look what they have to do to get by", it's to say "your time should be worth more than 1$/hr"
once gas prices went very low after fall 2022, media and analysts stopped talking about how important they are for Biden and Democrats' prospects
and then his approval didn't improve at all over the final 50% of his Presidency! despite those prices tanking and then remaining very low and stable
But I don't believe for a moment that anyone is stupid enough to drive 2 hours round-trip to buy a single loaf of bread.
But anyone driving two hours "for a loaf of bread" is also picking up the cheaper eggs, the fresher meat, and grandma's prescription.
Not to mention the gas is probably 10-20% cheaper.
Nevermind.
Cars rot people’s brains.
Demon haunted world type shit
The Dems failed to make that stick to the Shit Party.
Yes, folks still will drive 200 miles to save $2/loaf.
My freezer is pretty small, but I still freeze what I buy— folks in Nebraska surely ‘stock up’, too.
And TBH, even in nyc, we shop at 6 diff stores to get the best price.
Those people were full of shit
She misinterpreted what was said---it was a 5-second clip of a woman who lives in a tiny rural town who drives into the big city, b/c that's where the high-end, cheap bakery is (along w other stores, for sure).
She's not driving 100 miles, round trip, just to save $2 on bread.
It's why the current mileage reimbursement rate is 70 cents per mile.
https://www.irs.gov/tax-professionals/standard-mileage-rates
Same "logic" for why people speed thru red lights to get to a destination 1 min earlier.
1. https://www.seriouseats.com/better-no-knead-bread-recipe
2. https://smittenkitchen.com/2011/03/sally-lunn-bread-honeyed-brown-butter-spread/
Don’t have a dutch oven? There’s an updated low-knead version:
https://youtu.be/0VDj8uT3aUU?si=w_sd18rHiApkztYy
[screams in Home Ec]
We must, MUST reincorporate home ec in education, this is insane.
So I’m scorching both the story, and the cooking ignorance that made it seem remotely credible.
I would be EMBARRASSED to report such nonsense out. You can make a tin of sandwich bread in less time! And a BAKERY?! Not just saving $2 at Target, but an aha BAKERY?
I must know more.
The exec’s framing, on the other hand, makes me wonder if she understands this isn’t an epic quest for bread.
And by “people,” I explicitly mean network execs.
B: how much inflation is caused by gargantuan corporations keeping prices at oligopoly/monopoly levels?
C: how much of wage levels is influenced by corporations crushing unions?
What did Repubs do about these things?
Trump is a revolting human being.
Trump voters failed the basic test of democracy: don't elect people who will hurt you.
Even if they also bought other groceries, this doesn't make any sense once you factor in opportunity costs.
Did anyone bother fact checking this nonsense?
2. Most people are irrational and innumerate
3. I appreciate recent report on how inflation experience varied by income.
Nobody does this. This story is not true. It's not true because you don't save $2 driving for a product an extra 2 hours. That's not how spending or math works. Also this isn't 1890 where ppl are limited on bread choices.
Just a soulless lie
The issue is people putting groceries on credit cards for example.
It’s helpful to realize when you’re arguing against a straw man, but I guess reporters helped create that straw man in the first place with dumb reporting. #nbc
Also, are buying "Dave's Killer Bread?" Are you going to a fancy bakery? Normal ass bread is about two bucks here in left coast Washington.
The story leads with a dad who is presented as a reasonable guy b/c he's worried his kids will be sent to fight in Taiwan.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-oXxEPtkEH/?hl=en
First world problems
My strong guess is she goes into the city b/c she's a normal person who is happy to drive 1-hour every once in awhile to get high-quality, cheap goods she can't get in a rural town. Nothing to do w inflation
Hey @columjournreview.bsky.social you aware your Chairman of the Board is out here pushing bullshit?
@chrislhayes.bsky.social Any thoughts on whether the spinoff will help your network get free of this type of insight?
(Google has gotten worse, but it still works when someone happens to sell property)
Economy's not bad!
Lincoln is the state capital. They have bakeries there.
I'm wondering in that article if a trip to a Nebraska diner was involved. /s
Weird how fox news watchers would be terrified of inflation!
Fuck all legacy media.
Thank you for your time.
They spent at least $15 to $25 on gas to save $2 on bread, and they’re blaming Biden for being broke.
Way to go, America 🤦🏻♀️
A bit before half way through a customer reports they pay "$2 for 5" vs "$2.50 for 1" in other stores. Much bigger discount than $2 per loaf
Instagram does not seem to offer any useful video controls so I can't tell you where to fast forward to.
I didn’t see the story,maybe they were really big loaves.
Trust me, I do tech support, I see how dumb executives are firsthand. No one has a front row seat to the stupidity like IT.