A new study shared exclusively with the Lever details how corporate media has routinely downplayed the effects of corporate greed on price increases, often citing industry talking points or providing no explanation at all for crippling inflation over the past few years. Lawmakers then parroted these anti-greedflation narratives as they slashed pandemic aid, blocked spending, and abandoned efforts to increase the national minimum wage.
Now, with greedflation making a comeback as companies use President Donald Trump’s tariff threats to justify jacking up prices, the study’s coauthor warns that politicians and regulators could once again use skewed corporate coverage to justify policies that further hurt consumers.
“Policymakers are just being fed this constant diet of, ‘Oh, it’s beyond [businesses’] control,” Hal Singer, an antitrust economist and managing director of the economic consulting firm Econ One, told the Lever. “What worries me is that this is our information ecosystem, and this is how policymakers are being informed. I want to make sure they’re getting accurate information.”
The study, conducted by Singer and Abla Abdulkadir, found that corporate news outlets tended “to attribute industry price hikes to factors beyond the control of the sellers in that industry.” The report noted that many of the articles examined failed to cite impartial experts or note that the stock markets experienced high returns during the years companies were raising prices.
The study examined business reporting by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Economist, Politico, the Financial Times, CNBC, Bloomberg, and Axios from January 2023 to the present. It found that on average,…
Auteur: Freddy Brewster
