David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, criticized news articles about eligibility for the next round of stimulus checks, saying they relied too much on a lone research paper.
Speaking on Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Dayen said the media focused disproportionately on a study, conducted by Opportunity Insights, about how people spent their stimulus checks based on Zip code data from 2019 to determine who should be eligible for the next round of direct payments.
Several news outlets, including The Washington Post and The New York Times wrote about the study, but never disclosed the data that it was based on, Dayen said.
“Elite opinion has driven a lot of this. There was a 10-minute segment on a morning show that used this data,” Dayen said. “It’s a one-page paper, by the way. There’s not a lot here. But it kept getting recycled over and over again and sort of manufacturing this belief that was based in a very sketchy reality.”
Watch part of Dayen’s interview above.
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