A prominent economist has revealed that Facebook has fact-checked a post claiming the US has entered a recession, giving it a “partly false” rating as President Biden continues to reject a gloomy assessment of the economy.
Dr. Philip Magness, director of research and education at the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian think tank, shared a screenshot from his Facebook account showing that the social media site had an “independent fact-checker” review his post from July 24 , and that they found it to be “partially false.”
“We live in an Orwellian hellscape,” Magnes tweeted Thursday. “Facebook is now ‘fact-checking’ anyone who questions the White House’s puns on the recession definition.”
Facebook added a notice to the post warning that “people who repeatedly share false information may move their posts lower in the News Feed so that other people are less likely to see them.”
Magnes, the director of research and education at the American Institute for Economic Research, took to Twitter to express his dismay. Twitter / @PhilWMagness
The correction comes after Biden last week denied the US was in recession, despite new data showing GDP shrank for a second straight quarter, meeting the long-accepted definition of a recession.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, the president tried to downplay the troubling report and shift the focus to near-record low unemployment numbers and his administration’s progress on steps to rein in rising inflation.
“This doesn’t sound like a recession to me,” he said, prompting GOP leaders to accuse the president of “gas lighting” the nation, with the Republican National Committee declaring the GDP report indicative of a “Biden recession.”
Economist Philip Magness accused Facebook of being “Orwellian” after his post claiming the US was in recession was fact-checked and labeled partially false. American Economic Institute
Other senior administration officials followed Biden’s lead, dismissing a report showing the economy shrank at an annual rate of 0.9 percent, following a 1.6 percent decline in the first quarter.
“We need to avoid a semantic battle,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told reporters last week, adding that “Americans’ biggest concern is inflation” and that they generally feel good about their ability to find and stay employed. work.
Determining whether the US is technically in a recession is usually done by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which is a private, non-profit research organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
A week before the negative GDP report was released, the White House fired off a preemptive blog post denying that two consecutive quarters of GDP decline is the official definition of a recession.
The publication’s author argued that “holistic data” such as “the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production and income” figure in the true definition of a recession.
President Biden last week sought to downplay a new report showing GDP contracted for the second quarter in a row.AP
“Based on these data, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year – even if it is followed by another decline in GDP in the second quarter – would indicate a recession,” the publication said.
Magness, who has been critical of Biden’s handling of the economy in the past, wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal on July 27 that accused the White House of “playing word games” instead of tackling underlying economic problems.
“The White House’s attempt to sidestep the recession shows the dangers of politicizing economic terms,” he wrote. “Mr. Biden’s economic advisers are trying to buy time by using the NBER’s otherwise defensible methodology. They hope this will insulate the administration from electoral backlash in the event of a downturn.”
Magness again took aim at the administration on Twitter on Saturday, accusing the White House and the media of hypocrisy.
“Recession. n. 1. 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth when the media dislikes the president. 2. A vague, blanket, ill-defined condition that you’re not allowed to talk about until the NBER makes a decision in a year, provided the media likes the president,” he mockingly wrote.
Nearly 8 in 10 Americans describe the U.S. economy as bad, and roughly 7 in 10 disapprove of Biden’s economic leadership, according to a June poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
With pole cables
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