Fact Checking the Denver Post

In an article titled "Taking stock of GOP's revolution" the author writes:

The party of business has presided over less-than-stellar growth, even with Republican Alan Greenspan chairing the Federal Reserve Board. Thanks mainly to the recession of 2001, the growth in gross domestic product since 1994 (an average of 5.16 percent) has not matched that of the preceding 10 years (6.9 percent) or the 10 years before that (10.2 percent).

Looking at the growth rates, they looked like nominal, not real, GDP growth rates. So I emailed the author:

Dear Sir:

I have some questions regarding your article "Taking stock of GOP's revolution" from the September 26, 2004 issue of The Denver Post. In it you write:

"the growth in gross domestic product since 1994 (an average of 5.16 percent) has not matched that of the preceding 10 years (6.9 percent) or the 10 years before that (10.2 percent)."

If I'm interpreting this correctly, the following table is equivalent:

Period GDP Growth
------ ----------
1974-1983 10.20%
1984-1993 6.90%
1994-2004 5.16%

Yet when I look at the Bureau of Economic Analysis' (www.bea.gov) "Historical Gross Domestic Product estimates." (http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/gdpchg.xls) the numbers in the above table seem to correspond to NOMINAL growth, not REAL growth. The REAL growth averages for the periods would be:

Period GDP Growth
------ ----------
1974-1983 2.26%
1984-1993 3.33%
1994-2003 3.27%

Were you using nominal growth and, if so, don't you think that using that measure instead of real growth significantly distorts the picture because nominal growth is boosted tremendously by inflation which was very high in the 1970s and has been much lower the past ten years?

Thanks,
Bret

The author did respond with what I consider to be a rather lame response:

A very good point Bret. Thanks for writing. jack

Clearly not much interest in fixing the article. At least he admitted the error. Not that the admission of error will do anyone any good who has read the article. They'll remain mislead by this incorrect factoid.

It's getting to the point where I won't even read the main stream media (MSM) anymore. Too many errors, most of which go uncorrected.