The Media in General and the New York Times in Particular

I have denounced our media again and again. I wish to God that such denunciations could be focused on the lying machines of Fox News and the vicious demagoguery of Rush Limbaugh, or other clearly Right Wing Media. Unfortunately, the so-called liberal media is failing us. Its editorials, more often than not are fine, but its more important feature articles leave much to be desired.

I have written about this time and time again. Please, please, read my blog posts "The Media III - Falsehoods about Kerry" and even more important "The Media II - Falsehoods about Gore."

The editorial pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post usually say the right things, but the news and feature stories are far more important, and they too often go for the sensational, or the just plain sloppy.

What has set up my ire today is a front page article in the New York Times entitled "Payroll Tax Cut Is Unlikely to Survive Into Next Year."

Here is what the article says at paragraph three: “Independent analysts say that the expiration of the tax cut could shave as much as a percentage point off economic output in 2013, and cost the economy as many as one million jobs.”

But at paragraph 10 it says: “independent economists say that the economy could shoulder the payroll tax increase without undue harm.”

Who are the independent analysts? Who are the independent economists? Is there a difference?

The author doesn’t say.

But that’s not all!!! The article goes on to say, “Many Republicans vehemently opposed its passage last year, as it would divert money from the Social Security program.”

Really? Since when do Republicans worry about diverting money from a program they have long wanted to gut and abolish. But in fact, the program doesn’t divert money from the Trust fund. Under its provisions any revenue lost to the Social Security Trust Fund must be, and is made up out of general revenue. See the applicable IRS Bulletin. 

But the New York Times article doesn’t tell us that. It leaves us believing that the reduction in the payroll tax negatively impacts the Social Security Trust Fund and the long-term viability of SS. This is simply not true.

But I don’t want to single out the New York Times. I focus on that paper because I read it more than any other and so its sins of omission and commission come to my attention more frequently.

But let us not overlook the highly regarded PBS Newshour, which was recently reprimanded by its ombudsman, for presenting a segment on global warming saying ” … it is wrong to create an artificial or false equivalence…”

But this is not the first time that the Newhour, a program I watch religiously, as being one of the few good news programs on the air, gave false information, or sought a false equivalency. While I have no proof, the fear of a funding cut-off from Republicans in Congress undoubtedly makes the program careful not to allow truth to offend those who hold the purse strings. What we need is for enough money to pour into PBS for it to be endowed with funds making it truly independent of outside pressures.

I could undoubtedly go on and on about our inadequate media, but neither my time nor my readers patience will allow that.

So let me close with a reference to Fareed Zakaria on CNN last Sunday and in the Washington Post on September 26 where Zakaria in effect assumes that Romney is so vague about his budgetary plans, that if he gave out more details he would offend his Tea Party base. Why does Zakaria assume that the real Romney is the centrist who governed Massachusetts, despite all evidence to the contrary? The evidence for those who choose to have their eyes and ears open is that he has in fact become the Tea Party acolyte he appears to be, and that he is vague about his plans, not because he is afraid of offending his Tea Party base, but because he is afraid that he would lose most of the centrist voters, and maybe many of those 47%, non-income tax-paying voters who amazingly still support him, if they knew of his real plans.

And so his plans are a secret, just as his tax returns are secret, for the more we know the fewer votes he would get.

But to me the attempted false equivalency infects the news media. If the Republican Party adopted the Flat Earth Society platform we would undoubtedly soon have debates in our media on the subject of whether the earth is flat.

But it is not only false equivalency. It is the echo chamber. Once a certain paradigm is set, no one questions it. Thus we hear again and again how “no sitting president facing an unemployment rate more than 8% has won another term since Franklin D. Roosevelt.” and this is repeated over and over again, often without mention of FDR’s re-election. The message becomes, intended or not, that no President deserves re-election with such an unemployment rate. But what is left out of this equation is that no President since FDR has inherited an economy as bad as this one, and somehow that is rarely if ever mentioned. If the one is constantly repeated, shouldn’t the other? But the media is stacked. Not the liberal way, as we keep hearing. But subtly, ever so subtly, in favor of the Right. But this is never enough. The attacks on the media as being too liberal will keep on coming, and the media ever craven will accommodate, and move further and further right to stop the attacks, which will never, ever, stop until all we get is clones of Fox.