Robert Johnson, the founder of BET television and America’s first black billionaire, had some positive things to say about the economy in April, but most liberal media failed to notice. The one national paper to cover it delayed including it in the print edition for more than a week.
Citing multiple factors including “fairly stable” interest rates, the “Trump tax cut,” and historically low unemployment for African Americans, Johnson said, “Business is very good.”
He also told Squawk Box viewers on April 6, “I believe that the economy is on a strong growth path.” In addition to founding BET, Johnson owns asset management firm RLJ Companies.
Later in the same broadcast Johnson told CNBC, “You have to take encouragement from what’s happening in the labor force and the job market. When you look at African American unemployment in over 50 years since the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been keeping the number, you have never had two things: African American unemployment this low, and the spread between unemployment among whites and African Americans this narrow.”
He interpreted that as a job market which is bringing in employees who had been out of the labor force for various reasons.
However, in spite of Johnson’s media and business prominence his positive attitude about the economy under President Donald Trump and how it is helping African Americans was all but ignored by liberal media outlets.
ABC, CBS and NBC news programs all ignored it, according to a Nexis search.
The Washington Post was the only national newspaper to report on it — but the Post failed to run the story in its print edition until April 15, on page G3. Nine days after the CNBC interview. That print story was the same as a digital version that appeared on the Post’s website on April 7.
The Post article quoted Johnson extensively, but unsurprisingly included two liberal critics of his remarks.
