On April 1, the Associated Press, in an online video which I covered in an April 2 NewsBusters post, interviewed three California business owners about the impact the state’s just-passed $15-per-hour minimum wage would have on their businesses.
Though the video was headlined “Small Businesses React to Calif. Wage Increase,” the owners interviewed weren’t representative of the whole state in any way. All three are based in San Francisco. Two of the three are supporters of the minimum-wage increase; the third, a small bookstore owner, thinks businesses like his should have been exempt, as the increase should only have targeted “multinational corporations that make billions of dollar of profits.” It turns out that two of the three owners interviewed by AP were also interviewed by Susan Adams at Forbes on March 31. That can’t possibly be a wild coincidence.
At least Adams’s headline (“What A $15 Minimum Wage Means For Three Small Businesses In San Francisco”) isn’t deceptive.
Her write up revealed more about the two business owners involved than the two-minute AP video could. To no one’s surprise, these two are even less representative of the small businesses in California than the AP conveyed.
