Michelli responds to Colorado Media Matters regarding his inaccurate citation of a "40 percent" French unemployment rate

Summary: KVOR host Joseph Michelli responded to a Colorado Media Matters item noting that he misstated the French unemployment rate at "somewhere around 40 percent." Michelli said the source of his statistic was a Los Angeles Times column by Thomas McClintock, but that column specifies the 40 percent unemployment rate referred specifically to French "communities that recently rioted for days" rather than to the nation as a whole.

After Colorado Media Matters posted an item on September 8 pointing out News Radio 740 KVOR host Joseph Michelli's inaccurate statement during a September 5 discussion of the minimum wage that the French unemployment rate is "somewhere around 40 percent," Michelli responded in an email later on September 8. Michelli noted that while the Colorado Media Matters item stated that he "may have taken the 40 percent figure from a November 2005 article in Capitalism Magazine in which conservative columnist Thomas Sowell wrote, 'Unemployment rates among young Frenchmen are about 20 percent and among young Muslim men about 40 percent,' " his "comments regarding the French minimum wage were clearly referenced in my show as coming from an April 11, 2006 Los Angeles Times article by Tom McClintock."

During his September 5 broadcast, Michelli did reference the op-ed by McClintock, a Republican state senator from Thousand Oaks, Calif., in relation to a point he made regarding California's minimum wage. However, a transcript and audio of the broadcast show Michelli did not refer to that article as the source for his statement about the French economy or its unemployment rate. Furthermore, the transcript and audio indicate Michelli did not specify, as McClintock did, that the 40 percent unemployment rate referred specifically to French "communities that recently rioted for days" rather than to the nation as a whole, which McClintock noted had an unemployment rate "twice the American rate."

From Michelli's response to Colorado Media Matters:

Please, I am trying to be responsive and responsible. I ask the same of you. My comments regarding the French minimum wage were clearly referenced in my show as coming from an April 11, 2006 Los Angeles Times article by Tom McClintock, in which Mr. McClintock said "The French minimum wage is twice that of our federal minimum wage, and the result has not been greater prosperity. Quite the contrary, France's unemployment rate is twice the American rate, and it hovers at an intractable 40% within those communities that recently rioted for days."

I never referenced Thomas Sowell. I cited my source on the show and yet, your editorial approach to this makes it sound like the source was a mystery.

Does it do a service to your readers to create such division through selective editing? I appreciate your efforts to help make Colorado broadcasting better. Lets all be held to that standard of accountability. Again, thank you for your interest in my little show.

The McClintock article stated, "The French minimum wage is twice that of our federal minimum wage, and the result has not been greater prosperity. Quite the contrary, France's unemployment rate is twice the American rate, and it hovers at an intractable 40% within those communities that recently rioted for days." McClintock was referring to the late 2005 and early 2006 riots among France's poorest youth who, indeed, suffered a 40 percent unemployment rate.

From the September 5 broadcast of News Radio 740 KVOR's The Joseph Michelli Show:

CALLER: Well, I mean, I've had a lot of turnover because I expect people to work for the money that I pay them.

MICHELLI: You know, when California faced the minimum wage and they went to $7.75 an hour, Tom McClintock, who's a Republican senator in California, and he ran against Arnold on the Republican side, he wrote an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, and I thought it was pretty interesting the way he said, he suggested that this actually has a negative impact on the lowest paid workers in California because his argument was that anybody who doesn't deserve seven dollars and 75 cents an hour is going to be denied entry-level employment because people just won't hire you if, you know, they know they're not going to get their $7.75 worth.

CALLER: I mean it's -- right now I've got to start people at about 8 bucks an hour anyway.

MICHELLI: Yeah.

CALLER: All right. And that's kind of a minimum wage. I'll bet you -- you know, I wish Steve Bigari was around to tell us, but I will bet you that McDonald's couldn't get people in below 8 bucks an hour.

MICHELLI: Yeah, and what I understand is the French minimum wage is about twice what our federal minimum wage is. And it's not really translated into great prosperity for the French. In fact, right now, I think the unemployment rate -- I mean, the unemployment rate is somewhere around 40 percent in France.

—C.H.