NewsCommonsense

Does Fox Lean Right?

In the New York Times story today about Fox News President Roger Ailes being accused of lying  asking someone to lie in a wrongful termination lawsuit, we have this short ‘graph.

Mr. Ailes, a onetime adviser to Richard Nixon whom critics deride as a partisan who engineers Fox News coverage to advance Republicans and damage Democrats, something Fox has long denied.

At what point can a reporter say that Fox News is an organization that advances the cause of Republicans? Journalistic purists may not like it, but Fox News is not unlike many news organizations early in the past century and before. While there are some straight ahead news programs, they tend to lean right in their interviewing and it is better known as advocating a point of view. Just because the organization denies that they work on behalf of Republicans doesn’t mean that reporters can’t make a statement of fact that is obvious to everyone.

Regulations Kill Jobs?

In this morning’s Washington Post, writers Phil Rucker and David Hilzenrath write of Rep. Darrell Issa's plan to hold hearings on what regulations can be eliminated in the name of savings jobs.

Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and his supporters in the business community had remarkable message discipline. At least 13 times in the article were either quotes or attributions that included the word '”jobs” and how regulations are hurting the creation of them.

[House Republicans] are taking guidance from industry groups that say the rules threaten jobs.

…Issa asked industry groups to identify regulations that "have negatively impacted job growth."

…He said the probe is "a starting point for the broader discussion that will unfold about the regulatory barriers to job creation.

Thirteen times. You get the picture: Regulations reduce the number of jobs.

Except the writers place this sentence in the middle of the nearly 1,600-word story.

[M]any of the industry groups broadly said that government regulations would cost jobs but did not back up their claims with evidence.

How many times should reporters allow the purveyors of a point of view for which they offer no evidence that said view is true before said reporters refuse to be stenographers at a fantasy convention?

Maybe the claim by Republicans is true.  Then where is the evidence?

I went looking, of course, via Google. I entered the search term: do regulations hurt job creation [no quotes]. By page 17 in the results I had found no article that made the case that the GOP assertion was false. In fact, most of the results were the same article about Obama calling for relaxing some regulations or GOPers making their claim if not their case. Yet, I didn’t find a clear explanation of how regulations hurt job creation.

I then searched the same term with quotes around it. No results? No where in the entire World Wide Web has someone asked that question!

I then put in the term “regulations don’t hurt job creation” [with quotes].  No results. No one has made that claim.

Sure, people will argue, rightfully, that regulations often cost businesses. And we can all tell stories of how silly regulations waste time and don’t really stop much bad from happening. But costing  businesses money doesn’t mean it costs jobs. How do we know that the money or time saved would result in more jobs? What business would like us all to believe is that with the money they’d save they will invest it by hiring more people. But that it not a proven conclusion. It taint an ipso facto. The money saved could go to shareholders in higher dividends or to senior executives in higher pay.

Is the GOP claim true that regulations hurt job creation?   There appears no evidence easily found.

Maybe Messrs. Rucker and Hilzenrath could, you know, do a little reporting and find out.

Oppo Research on Reporters

Who is trying to discredit the reporter who wrote about the ultra-conservative Koch brothers?

There have been at least three efforts so far:

• The Washington Examiner (which editorialized extensively against Mayer's Koch brothers piece) did research trying to turn up evidence of Mayer's political partisanship; they apparently didn't find anything worth reporting.
• Elaine Lafferty wrote a pro-Koch response to Mayer's story in The Daily Beast, complete with friendly quotes from David Koch—who was unwilling to speak with Mayer herself. TDB later added an editor's note to the story admitting, among other things, that they "should have noted that the writer who interviewed Koch had been a consultant for the McCain/Palin campaign."
• And today, Keith Kelly reports on a third incident: The Daily Caller spent "several weeks" investigating a story that Mayer plagiarized work in her Koch brothers article, and in another story years ago. They found no evidence, and now they've dropped the story.

Social Security Is Not a Problem; The Press Is

Journalist and author William Greider eviscerates the journalism profession over its failure to describe issues surrounding Social Security.  It’s a worthy interview by Trudy Lieberman at the Columbia Journalism Review.

This is a staggering scandal for the media. I have yet to see a straightforward, non-ideological, non-argumentative piece in any major paper that describes the actual condition of Social Security. The core fact is that Social Security has not contributed a dime to the deficit, but has piled up trillions in surpluses, which the government has borrowed and spent. Social Security’s surpluses have actually offset the impact of the deficit, beginning with Reagan.

But what’s as damaging and insightful is his criticism of how the press works and especially why certain viewpoints are regularly ignored.  Read it.  Here are some highlights with emphasis my own:

[Reporters] identify with the wisdom of the elites.

..There are layers of influence that tell reporters this is the safe side of the story. They don’t go to people who might be unsafe sources, like labor leaders who know how changes will affect workers, or to old liberals who are out of favor but who know the origins of Social Security and why it was set up in the first place, or to neutral experts like actuaries who actually understand how it works and what the trust funds are all about. If they write about what the AFL-CIO thinks, they are out of the orthodoxy.

…Most reporters who cover difficult areas typically develop sources, and they write for those sources. They don’t want to offend them for fear they will lose access. Reporters, we know, are sensitive, nervous animals; they act like scared little rabbits. They also know what the owners of their publications think. And those owners think pretty much what the Business Roundtable and Chamber of Commerce think.

…Reporters are so embedded in the established way of understanding things. They are distanced from people at large and don’t spend much time trying to see why ordinary people see things differently from the people in power.

…In the last twenty years, as media ownership became highly concentrated, the gulf between the governing elites, both in and out of government, and the broad range of ordinary citizens has gotten much worse. The press chose to side with the governing elites and look down on the citizenry as ignorant or irrational, greedy, or even nutty.

…The press is dangerously over-educated itself, in that reporters have developed different kinds of expertise themselves. And that brings them closer to their sources, more motivated to write for their approval.

…The new technological knowledge becomes a tool that blocks old-fashioned street reporting. The polling and focus groups work against old style reporting. Political reporters rely on the pseudo-science to tell them what people think instead of doing what reporters are supposed to do—talking to real people where they live, listening to their perspectives and respecting their views.

Right Wing Blogger Post’s Assignment Editor

With all the problems we should be discussing, The Post allows a right wing blogger, the same one who started the NYC mosque controversy, to set the agenda.

The story is about an alleged boycott of Campbell Soups because its Canadian subsidiary is producing halal soup.  The claim is not opposition to halal foods, but to the organization that is certifying the designation.

ISNA has denied any ties to Hamas or to officials of a defunct charity called Holy Land Foundation, who were convicted in the conspiracy case. It has specifically condemned religious extremism and violence. In the wake of the conspiracy trial, Jewish and Protestant organizations issued statements in support of ISNA. A spokesperson for the group was unavailable for comment.

But still, The Post makes a story of it. 

Progressive Rally Ignored by The Post?

I find it curious that, given all the run-up coverage The Washington Post gave to the Beck rally on August 28, I can find no mention in The Post about the planned rally this coming weekend on the Mall by progressive groups, who have stated their goal is to surpass the number of people who attend the Beck rally.

The New York Times covered the plans this weekend.

When I called the Post’s national desk this morning, the man answering could give me no answer and transferred me to Dan Balz’s email.

UPDATE:  After a series of email exchanges, I was referred to a July story about not the planned march but the formation of the “One Nation” coalition.  We’ll see if The Post gives this march much coverage and whether it rates this archived altar to Beck’s rally.

Post Neglects to Fact Check Right-Wing Screed

At first, I thought this article was indicative of the right’s bending the truth to fit its ideology, but on further reflection, it is more a damning indictment of Outlook editors at The Washington Post.

I’ve written a few opinion columns for The Post and have been challenged for assertions I made in them.  But that scrutiny apparently doesn’t hold when the newspaper is trying to refute charges of liberal bias.  To do that, it seems to allow conservatives to draw any conclusion they want.

The article is provocatively titled “America’s new culture war:  Free enterprise vs. government control” by Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute.  Its thesis is that most Americans want free enterprise capitalism while the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress want “European-style statism grounded in expanding bureaucracies, a managed economy and large-scale income redistribution.”

The entire article is intellectually dishonest, and Post editors should be ashamed for not challenging Brooks’ assertions.  He cites a Gallup Poll that

…found that 86 percent of Americans have a positive image of "free enterprise," with only 10 percent viewing it negatively. Similarly, in March 2009, the Pew Research Center asked individuals from a broad range of demographic groups: "Generally, do you think people are better off in a free-market economy, even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time, or don't you think so?" Almost 70 percent of respondents agreed that they are better off in a free-market economy, while only 20 percent disagreed.

I support stricter financial industry regulation, more environmental controls, a safety net for the poor, more federally financed infrastructure projects and a few other Obama administration policies.  I also have a “positive image of ‘free enterprise’” and I generally think people are better off in a “free-market economy.”  That doesn’t mean I oppose sensible controls or support libertarian concepts of the wild west in our economic system.

To suggest these poll results support Brooks’ contention that Obama and company are out of the mainstream is ludicrous, particularly if you look at that same March 2009 poll at the time of the stock market’s nadir.

• People were split 50-50 on wanting “smaller government and fewer services or bigger government and more services”
• 54% said it was a “good idea for the government to exert more control over the economy than it has in
  recent years.”
• 56% thought Obama’s stimulus plan was a “good idea.”

The poll was wide-ranging, and if anything, doesn’t merely not support Brooks’ contention that Obama is out of sync with the American people; the poll actually refutes Brooks’ thesis.

Moreover, there is no evidence that Obama and company want to dissolve free markets or abandon capitalism for socialism as Brook argues.  Why does The Post let him draw such fallacious and dishonest conclusions?

The article, given precious center-front page placement in Outlook, is replete with disingenuous, erroneous or duplicitous conclusions.

If we reject the administration's narrative, the 70-30 nation will remain strong. If we accept it, and base our nation's policies on it, we will be well on our way to a European-style social democracy. Punitive taxes and regulations will make it harder to be an entrepreneur, and the rewards of success will be expropriated for the sake of greater income equality.

Brooks also argues that unfettered permission to maximize profits without regard to societal good is not only preferable but a convenient measure of success.

Earned success involves the ability to create value honestly -- not by inheriting a fortune, not by picking up a welfare check. It doesn't mean making money in and of itself. Earned success is the creation of value in our lives or in the lives of others. Earned success is the stuff of entrepreneurs who seek value through innovation, hard work and passion. Earned success is what parents feel when their children do wonderful things, what social innovators feel when they change lives, what artists feel when they create something of beauty.

Money is not the same as earned success but is rather a symbol, important not for what it can buy but for what it says about how people are contributing and what kind of difference they are making. Money corresponds to happiness only through earned success.

What Brooks seems to miss is that for many Americans, it is becoming impossible to earn success by creating “value honestly.”  The widening gulf between rich and poor is not because the poor are working any less hard.  They simply are pawns of those who want a greater share of the fruits of others’ labor.

Ironically, he concludes by citing Sen. Scott Brown’s victory as a symbol of the revolt of the “70% coalition.”

Scott Brown won the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat from Massachusetts in January by declaring himself not an apparatchik Republican but a moral enthusiast for markets. "What made America great?" he asked. "Free markets, free enterprise, manufacturing, job creation. That's how we're gonna do it, not by enlarging government." His cultural pitch for free enterprise hit just the right chord, even in liberal Massachusetts. It struck at the heart of the 30 percent coalition's agenda for America.

Scott Brown is one of four Republican senators who just voted for the administration’s financial regulatory reform bill.

I guess The Post’s Outlook editors didn’t notice either.

Post Issues GOP Press Release

Despite the rather snarky lede—

Two days after the dramatic arrest of Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad, Republicans were engaged in a full-bore effort to rewrite the good-news narrative.

"Yes, we have been lucky," House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) said Thursday, "but luck is not an effective strategy for fighting terrorism."

Whatever the merits of their argument -- and, where terrorism is concerned, it is prudent to keep cockiness at bay -- there is a political imperative at work as well. "Democrats are always suspect on national security, and anything that makes them look weak on national security creates an opportunity for Republicans," said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster.

--is this really nothing more than issuing the GOP talking points for a non-story?  We know that all the GOP wants is to put into people’s mind that the Dems are weak on terrorism. The Post obliges.

While Republicans praised the FBI and local authorities, they noted that the intelligence agencies have -- for the third time since the Fort Hood attack in November -- failed to interrupt an individual before the act. "I look at the Christmas deal," said Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (Calif.), referring to the attempted airliner bombing over Detroit, "and I look at this deal, and I say, 'Wow, one of these times they are going to get it right.' "

Does anyone really believe that we can stop all attempts to detonate a bomb if someone with half a brain wants to?  Yes, we have been lucky.  But someone is going to succeed. 

Instead of acting as a stenographer for the GOP’s talking points, might it been helpful for The Post to examine how other countries have dealt with such random bombings?  Israel, of course, comes to mind.  We might not like the solution.  Or might the reporters have asked the Republicans leadership, “What would you do differently?”  How would you stopped someone—a citizen, with little suspicious behavior, from attempting such an attack?

Alas, that doesn’t fit into the easy narrative that too many journalists buy into—conflict.  No matter how ludicrous the charge, it is conflict and reporters can easily write their “he said, she said” story.

McDonnell Must Love Washington Post’s Confederacy Proclamation Story

As most folks in my business would probably tell you, the most important parts of a newspaper story are, in roughly this order, the photo (if any), the headline, the lede and the last sentence.  More folks will see the photo and read the headline than will read the story.  A few more will read the first few graphs, maybe to the jump, and then abandon it.  The fewest will read the entire piece, and the last impression you give them in the story (the close) will have an impact.

With that in mind, I offer Anita Kumar’s story today in The Washington Post.  There are slights of writing that impact the readers’ perceptions.

In the dead-tree version, the story is in the upper left of page one, a fitting placement.  The proclamation by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell of “Confederate History Month” created a national furor and, of course, it’s a homegrown story.

The headline is “McDonnell admits a ‘major omission.’”  That’s pretty accurate.  He didn’t apologize for celebrating Confederate History Month, but only that he did not refer to slavery.  (Which is like referring to the oppression of the Jews in WWII without mentioning that that oppression was more than hurling epithets.)  Note that in the online version the headline is different but also accurate:  “Virginia governor amends Confederate history proclamation to include slavery.”

The lede, however, is another issue.

After a barrage of nationwide criticism for excluding slavery [emphasis added] from his Confederate History Month proclamation, Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) on Wednesday conceded that it was "a major omission" and amended the document to acknowledge the state's complicated past.

The criticism was not just about “excluding slavery” from the proclamation; it was about the proclamation itself.  Why do we celebrate traitors to this country?  Why do we celebrate a movement that sought to preserve the most despicable of human institutions?

I’ll admit that some of the chatter I saw, heard and read the last two days  was a little wishy-washy on this issue.  Liberals, especially elected officials, didn’t want to go all the way there for fear of alienating Southerners who continue to cling the notion of the noble confederate.  But I think it’s fair to say that many people, especially those who’ve had little contact with the South, are baffled by this sanitized view of the Civil War.  Were there other issues besides slavery, for example, states rights?  Yes, but they stemmed from the issue of slavery; they were not separate and apart.  Why, those folks ask, do Southerners celebrate the Confederacy?

McDonnell and his supporters must be happy with the next two paragraphs as they give his original rationale for omitting slavery and his rectification of the mistake.  In fact, the entirety of the story before the jump is favorable to McDonnell—a man taking responsibility for his action and graciously calling two key critics.

After the jump, we see another headline:  “Despite apology, criticism of McDonnell continues.”  So where’s the evidence that criticism continues (though I’m sure it does)?  After a graph that details the changes to the proclamation, we have this curious graph:

But his decision to declare April Confederate History Month continued to cause a firestorm Wednesday, with national media descending on Richmond and Democrats and African Americans accusing the new governor of ignoring the state's role in slavery.

Was the firestorm before or after McDonnell’s mea culpa?  If after, as is the logical interpretation, despite the lede, there is a firestorm over not just the omission of slavery in the proclamation, but the proclamation itself.  OK, where’s the evidence in the story?

From the point of the above graph, we have Sheila Johnson’s critical statement—made before McDonnell’s change of heart.  State Sen. Don McEachin, as Johnson an African-American, says he accepts McDonnell’s apology

…but said he was disappointed that the state had to undergo the embarrassment and national scrutiny that followed the proclamation. "It's a black eye," he said.

That doesn’t criticize the proclamation but suggests that if it had included words about slavery it wouldn’t have been scrutinized.  Of course, there’s no way of knowing that.

Kumar then gives a little history of the proclamation and includes a statement by former Virginia Gov. and now Democratic Party chairman Tim Kaine that also seems to criticize McDonnell on the basis of the omission not the proclamation itself.

"Governor McDonnell's decision to designate April as Confederate History Month without condemning, or even acknowledging, the pernicious stain of slavery or its role in the war disregards history, is insensitive to the extraordinary efforts of Americans to eliminate slavery and bind the nation's wounds, and offends millions of Americans of all races and in all parts of our nation," he said.

So where is the voice to continued criticism?

Kumar then turns over the last five graphs to the Sons of the Confederacy, the group that requested the proclamation.The story ends with a quote that makes the group appear reasonable.

"All we're looking for is an accurate history, which we don't get in schools anymore or in the media," [Sons of Confederate Veterans national board member Brag] Bowling said. "The idea is to promote education in Virginia and tourism. Hopefully, we can still do that."

McDonnell and his allies must be pleased.  The article and jump headline allude to continued criticism but give no voice to it.  Meanwhile, the sons of traitors get to whitewash history and attack the media for not picking up a paint brush with them.

UPDATE:  The Post’s Robert McCartney has a thoughtful column on this issue, though I disagree with his conclusion that it’s justified to honor Confederate “heritage” because of Robert E. Lee’s “brilliant generalship.”

Cross posted on Commonwealth Commonsense.

Understatement of the Day

Further assessment – this took longer than I should have spent on it.

Above is the last sentence in a long, detailed explanation with electronic images of why the author (Mediate’s Philip Bump) thinks the now infamous photo of Tea Party founder Dale Robertson is not a fake.  Robertson had said he never seen examples of racism at Tea party events.  Then this photo of him was circulated.

In today’s media environment, just by spending so much time and energy debunking the myth that it’s a fake reinforces the message that it’s a fake.