Trying to hide bad news, povery and income report released Friday

Keep an eye on Friday's release of the Census Bureau's statistics on poverty and household income.

For the past 15 years, the Census Bureau has always released the report on a Tuesday or Thursday. This year, in order to mask the bad news buried within the report, the report will be released on a Friday.

Census spokesman Lawrence Neal says the agency "picked a date out of the air." But the Bush administration has a pattern of announcing controversial or unfavorable news as the weekend begins.

To attract little attention, the strategy makes sense. Friday night's network news broadcasts are the least-watched of the workweek. Saturday newspapers are the week's least-read editions.

Last year's report was pretty heinous, and if the release date is any indication, this year's promises to be even worse.

Last year's reports showed that median household income in 2001 registered the first significant decline since 1991 and the percentage of Americans living in poverty rose from 11.3% to 11.7%, the first increase in five years.

Posted September 22, 2003 08:04 AM | Comments (23)