Economy Claims Checklist for Political Journalism

Capture the verbatim statement, the timecode, and the venue or post URL so producers can roll tape and editors can source it quickly.

Store the video and a line-by-line transcript with speaker IDs in your newsroom drive to enable fast pull quotes and standards review.

Tag the claim as jobs, GDP, stock market, inflation, tariffs, or tax policy, and note whether it asserts a level, change, record, or forecast.

Upload official transcripts, campaign emails, and screenshots of social posts with headers and timestamps to preserve the record.

Write down the implied baseline and universe, for example private payrolls vs total nonfarm, households vs establishments, or S&P 500 vs Dow.

If the segment will label a claim false, alert Standards and Legal for script language and lower-third phrasing before booking.

Bookmark BLS, BEA, FRED, USITC, and JCT sources you will need so producers can fetch data without delay.

Use seasonally adjusted total nonfarm payrolls for headline jobs and confirm monthly revisions before publication.

Compare CPS series LNS12000000 and LNS14000000 to ensure the claim is not mixing surveys or metrics.

Verify Average Hourly Earnings (CES) against CPI-U or PCE to report real wage change, and specify production and nonsupervisory if used.

Pull BEA Table 1.1.1 for percent change at annual rates and Table 1.1.6 for real GDP levels to avoid nominal misreads.

Confirm S&P 500, Dow, or Nasdaq records with closing data and state when citing total return vs price index.

Stick to CPI-U or PCE, headline or core, state which one, and cite the data month and release date to avoid vintage confusion.

Confirm Section 301 or 232 lists and rates by HTS subheading using Federal Register notices and USITC tools, then note effective dates.

Ground claims in Joint Committee on Taxation distribution tables and CBO scorekeeping baselines, noting year-by-year effects and expirations.

Choose start and end dates that reflect policy impact windows and note NBER recession dates to avoid cherry-picked trough-to-peak comparisons.

For GDP or income claims, compute per capita or per household figures to reflect population growth effects.

Report in real terms where relevant and state whether series are seasonally adjusted for apples-to-apples comparisons.

Write scripts that separate total level claims from month-over-month or year-over-year changes to prevent conflation.

If a claim is about private payrolls, verify CES0500000001 and explain differences from total nonfarm including government.

Flag preliminary vs revised releases and explain expected revision ranges for CES and BEA to set audience expectations.

Cite importer-of-record status and credible studies on passthrough to consumer prices when a claim implies foreign payers absorb tariffs.

In copy for web and broadcast, lead with the verified finding and the metric used so the audience hears the conclusion early.

For guest interviews, script concise follow-ups that reference the exact series and timeframe to elicit on-record clarifications.

Add a brief methods line in the article or chyron note that cites the data source, table or series ID, and date pulled.

Do not frame verified falsehoods as competing claims, and reserve 'misleading' for incomplete context rather than clear error.

If an estimate relies on seasonal adjustment or model-based smoothing, say so plainly to maintain credibility.

Maintain templates for jobs, GDP, inflation, and markets with locked scales and styles to accelerate turnaround.

For on-air and web charts, include units like millions of jobs, percent, or index level, and display the start month and year.

Keep zero on axis where appropriate and note when you use log scale to prevent visual exaggeration.

Add footers like "Source: BLS CES0000000001, seasonally adjusted, retrieved via FRED" with a permalink for audience verification.

Verify color contrast, alt text, and screen-reader descriptions so charts are usable across broadcast and digital.

Write social captions that include the metric, date, and verdict to prevent decontextualized resharing.

Save scripts, charts, and datasets with tags for claim type, date, and series ID so future segments can be produced quickly.