Look which media outlets uncritically repeated Perry's unrealistic job numbers

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201110170020

October 17, 2011 4:56 pm ET by Shauna Theel

Citing a study commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil and gas industry trade group, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry claimed he could create over a million jobs by expanding domestic fossil fuel production. That estimate is based on highly dubious assumptions, but several news outlets have uncritically repeated it.

Michael Levi, an energy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, did what so many news media outlets have proven unable or unwilling to do, and actually scrutinized API's numbers. He concluded that they are "unrealistic": snip

Yet according to a Nexis search, several news outlets simply repeated Rick Perry's claim that his energy plan could produce more than one million jobs.

The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and NBC's Today repeated Perry's claim without noting the unrealistic assumptions behind it, or that it came from an industry-funded study. And The Christian Science Monitor repeated Perry's claims and then actually suggested that they are correct, relying heavily on conservative economist Peter Morici: