Michigan may lead the country with its unemployment rate, but if you are looking to the mainstream media for help understanding what this means for people living here — good luck!

Continued -A media study by the progressive think tank Center for American Progress found that though more people are turning to the web for news — a trend that we here at Michigan Messenger are struggling to hasten — when it comes to economic coverage, most people still go to mainstream news outlets that generally tell economic stories from the business point of view, leaving out the perspectives of ordinary workers.

By analyzing economic coverage from the leading print and television outlets for 2007, the center found that in stories about employment, business was sourced 6.7 times as frequently as workers.

This imbalance threatens democracy by leaving citizens ill-informed and is largely the result of journalists’ “decided preference” for elite sources such as spokespeople for business groups. The imbalance could be overcome, the study says, if editors and journalists would actively seek out the perspectives of workers.

For more see “Journalists Give Workers the Business: How the Mainstream News Ignores Ordinary People in Economics Coverage.”