A Washington Post opinion piece this week posed an interesting question: What if television news channels like CNN displayed unemployment numbers throughout the day the way they do infection and death counts, thus raising awareness of the enormous economic cost the coronavirus is wreaking on the nation? Greater public awareness of job loss could pressure lawmakers to accelerate relief programs, much as wall-to-wall coverage of infection counts has pushed government leaders to enact more mobility restrictions on citizens. This raises the question of just how much more coverage infection counts are getting compared with unemployment numbers.
Infection Count Vs. Jobless Data: An Imbalanced TV Picture
