People believe the press because they trust news reports and most people have no idea of the bias behind the news. When I read blogs and news stories with comments, left-wing posters often complain about Fox News and call it names like "Faux News," yet it is pretty much the only news channel that leans conservative, and that's pretty much only the opinion shows like Hannity and O'Reilly. It's actual news programs are pretty middle of the road. On the other hand, how many channels out there are on the left side of the political spectrum? ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, MTV, PBS...even the sports channels like ESPN will occasionally veer into politics and it's always to the left. Then there's American newspapers. How many are conservative? Two: the Washington Times and Investor's Business Daily. The New York Post sometimes goes right and the Wall Street Journal is right in it's opinion pages but not in its news division. On the left you have the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, and pretty much every other newspaper in the country. Except for a few TV channels and newspapers the left basically has a monopoly on the news and influence public opinion to the Democrat Left. So when the White House in controlled by a Democrat, basically whatever it says gets passed on unquestioned by the press who in turn report it to the public. That's why so many people believe those false numbers even if they see huge number of unemployed people with their own eyes. Not just unemployed people, but underemployed people made even worse when Obama and the Democrats in Congress redefined full time work as 30 hours instead of 40, increasing the number of working poor.