RUSH: Now, I want to go back to 1982, May 7th, ABC News. At the time Charles Gibson was a correspondent. Peter Jennings was the anchor of the ABC World News Tonight. In 1982 there was a recession, and the same level of unemployment then as now. And here is Charles Gibson in 1982 reporting the level of unemployment at close to what it is today when Ronald Reagan was president.
GIBSON 1982: (downcast music) There really isn’t any good news in the statistics. All the numbers are bad. Teenagers who will be coming on the job market in even greater numbers come June: 23% unemployed. Black teenage unemployment is 48.1%. And unemployment among adult men is 8.2%, the highest since World War II. Normally in spring unemployment comes down as opportunities for outdoor work become available, but not this year: 450,000 more people are unemployed than were a month ago.
RUSH: It’s 551,000 per month now and 450,000 people in 1982. ‘All numbers are bad,’ teenage employment, 23%. It’s 52% today! Here’s Charles Gibson June 5th, 2009, reporting on an unemployment rate of 9.4%.
GIBSON 2009: (bouncy music) In the current economic environment, sometimes a bad jobs report can look good! 345,000 American workers lost their jobs in May. A big number to be sure, traumatic if you’re one of the 345,000, but the number was smaller than economists had predicted, and that’s good news!
RUSH: So you see the difference, June 5th of 2009, ‘Not all economic news is bad, and not all bad news is bad. Sometimes bad jobs report can look good!’ In 1982, ‘All the numbers are bad.’ Same guy, same network, just 27 years apart.