Jobs ... Jack Welch ... and Cooking the Books

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

The Times took note of the conspiracy theory but without giving it too much attention.

As the news from Friday's jobs report emerged, so did some strange interpretations.

General Electric's former chief executive Jack Welch led the way. The numbers â€" showing the unemployment rate dipping below 8 percent for the first time since 2009 â€" were cooked, he announced. He saw an Obama administration conspiracy, manipulating the numbers for the election season.

In a Twitter message, Welch wrote this: “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers.”

Informed people shrugged it off. Some conservative partisans cheered. And still others, like Newt Gingrich, fanned the flames by not exactingly agreeing, but indirectly lending the claims credence.

And it fell to the news media to react.

“We all saw the Welch Tweet and laughed,” said Winnie O'Ke lley, a deputy business editor at The Times. “We know that the agency is run by career professionals and not politically motivated because we spend a lot of time with their economists learning what they do.“

But, she noted, the rumor did have some traction, and was picked up by certain news outlets. One of those was the ABC News site, where Abby Ellin offered a wide-eyed report in which the lead paragraph included the statement that “the number has raised suspicions that the White House might be cooking the books ahead of the election next month.” Her story didn't begin to debunk the idea for several paragraphs.

Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College, in his smart survey of the media coverage for Columbia Journalism Review, called that coverage “appalling.”

Mr. Nyhan gave top grades to Politico and The Associated Press for their handling of the story. He did not mention The Times, which chose not to ignore the conspiracy theorists entirely, whil e not giving their views much ink.

With no mention of Mr. Welch, referring only to “conservative pundits,” the business writer Catherine Rampell's Saturday article stated, “These numbers are always tremendously volatile but the reasons are statistical, not political.”

Earlier, in the coverage for the Web, the Welch claim appeared as the conclusion of a piece by David Leonhardt and Mark Landler on The Caucus blog about the political ramifications of the jobs report, suggesting that the idea was far-fetched.

They wrote: “Many economists of both parties believe such accusations are false. The Labor Department economists who compile the jobs report are not political appointees.”

Mr. Leonhardt then quoted an independent economist, Ian Shepardson, who had written on Twitter: “Most economic data are nonsense. But that does not mean it is rigged. We aren't talking about Soviet tractor output here.”

I faulted The Times last month for its immediate, and I felt exaggerated, reporting that “job growth slowed substantially” when the numbers didn't back up that description.

This month, I think the paper struck the right balance in reporting on Mr. Welch's claim â€" providing perspective without giving it more attention than it deserved.