Tag: The Washington Post

Posted on By Guest Author Frederick J. Ryan, Jr.

An Independent Press: Essential to Our Democracy

We are living in challenging times for those who depend on the work of a free press.  Every day, journalists across the globe encounter censorship, harassment, and violence.  In every part of the world, authoritarian rulers are increasing their grip on the press, trying to prevent reporters from holding the powerful to account.

The Washington Post is sadly familiar with these attacks.  Our reporter Jason Rezaian was arrested and held inside Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison for 544 days, even though he had committed no crime.  We are grateful that he is now free and back at The Washington Post, where his writing often focuses on the importance of press freedom.   

Continue reading “An Independent Press: Essential to Our Democracy”
Posted on By Patrick Maines

David Stockman Riles the Commentariat

Unless you’re a demagogue or an ideologue (or, like Paul Krugman, both), it might have occurred to you that this country’s outsized money printing by the Fed and our ongoing fiscal deficits are going to end badly; that the debts being piled up, at the velocity of a hurricane, will never be repaid (indeed couldn’t be repaid other than with greatly devalued dollars); and that the likely end result therefore is going to be destabilizing inflation, and the passing along to future generations of staggering debt.

To harbor such thoughts is not only rational but wise, and undoubtedly on the minds of millions of Americans.  Which – along with the fact that he’s promoting a new book – perhaps explains why David Stockman recently wrote a lengthy op-ed piece in the New York Times in which he elaborates on these concerns, and lays the blame on Keynesianism and what he regards as other destructive concepts, past and present.

Titled “State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America,” Stockman’s piece is powerful stuff and so, of course, has attracted the wrath of legions of the “progressive” members of the commentariat.  Taken together, their criticisms speak volumes about the impoverishment of the progressive mindset but almost nothing about Stockman’s concerns.

Indeed, one gets the impression that the important thing for the sort of people encountered at places like the Huffington Post, Washington Post, and New York Times was to be early to the scene; rather like a contest, the winner would be the person who scored on Stockman the first and punchiest ad hominem attack.

So it is that Stockman’s piece is variously described as “spittle-filled,” a “horrific screed,” and the “unfortunate rant” of a “cranky old man.”

None of this is unprecedented, of course, and in fact it positively guarantees that Stockman’s book will be a best seller. But there’s something a little creepy about the invective employed by people who profess to come by their opinions as a consequence of sweet reason.  Creepier still is the intolerance displayed by Krugman, who characterizes his employers’ decision to publish Stockman’s piece as “mysterious.”

Whatever else one might say, the only people who would question the Times’ decision to publish Stockman’s piece are those who think that only their own views deserve a hearing.

Nobody is going to agree with everything that the gentleman wrote, but the decision to publish his piece was not only not mysterious, it was correct and, if anything, belated.

                                            

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The MSM: In a Horse Race to Irrelevancy?

Perhaps because of their declining prospects, much of the mainstream media are acting very hinky these days.  On the one hand we have the spectacle of such as the Associated Press and Newsweek openly adopting opinion as their journalistic motif.  While on the other we see newspapers, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, awash in the kind of political reporting that reduces even the most important policy issues to the banalities of “horse race” journalism.

This latter development has become all the more insufferable in the current nightmarish environment, where every current and proposed law or regulation should be more carefully analyzed for its effect on the economy than for its impact on politicians and political parties.

Coverage of the health care debate has been singularly inadequate for precisely this reason.  For every news and feature story that has delved into the effects, say, of the “public option” or the “employer mandate,” a hundred have dwelt on the chances of legislative passage, or on the political winners and losers.

Comes now the leaked e-mail  messages from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, just days before an important environmental summit in Copenhagen, and the question is whether the MSM, in the wake of it, will finally treat the subject of global warning with the care and objectivity that such a complex subject demands.

Even without so-called cap-and-trade legislation looming on the congressional horizon, the many national and international environmental laws that are now being implemented or considered require that global warming be closely scrutinized for its scientific findings, and for the impact and efficacy of any public policies as may be pursued in consequence.  The unseemly aspects of the CRU correspondence simply adds fuel to what should be a brightly burning subject even without it.

Consider, for instance, the critical linkages that have to be established and explained if “global warming” is to be understood by people generally (as distinguished from “warmists” or “skeptics”), as a subject they should care about.

First, it has to be clear that warming is happening, and that it is man-made, a subject about which there was, in fact, debate even before the CRU debacle.  Then it has to be determined that said warming is of such peril something needs to be done about it.  (Again, the subject of debate.)  Then, of course, it has to be shown that there is something that can be done about it.  And finally, we have to know that what we do won’t have negative consequences (like, for instance, on the economy) that are worse than the effects of the warming itself.

Seen in this way the opinions of climatologists are just one element, and not even the most important one, that needs to be considered and fully examined.  But is that happening in the coverage of this issue by the MSM?  Doesn’t look like it.  Instead, as with their coverage of health care reform, news stories about global warming tend to be either (1) preposterously opinionated, and wrapped in the familiar blather of political correctness, or (2) woefully superficial, a consequence of their horse-race aspects and focus not on substance but on the political sideshow.

Hardly a day goes by without someone, somewhere, lamenting the prospective demise of journalism, by which they mean, even if they don’t say so, what we have come to call the mainstream media – the broadcast networks, big-city papers, the newsweeklies, the wire services.  But as shown in their coverage of global warming and health care reform, today’s MSM appear to be adrift, and operating apart not only from their traditions, but also from what is in their own, and our, best interest.

Cross-posted in Huffington Post, here.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

News and Opinion

It’s not often that a parenthetical aside is the most notable part of a speech or written document, but that’s exactly the case with an opinion piece published in today’s Washington Post by that paper’s columnist Robert Samuelson.

Writing, and brilliantly as always, about health care legislation, Samuelson takes The New York Times and The Washington Post to task not just for what he sees as their mistaken characterizations of this legislation, but for their inclusion of these mischaracterizations in the papers’ news pages.

Thus does his piece, titled “Obamacare: Buy Now, Pay Later,” contain these words: “[Obama’s] health care plan is not ‘comprehensive,’ as Obama and The New York Times (in its news columns) assert, because it slights cost control….  If new spending commitments worsen some future budget or financial crisis, Obama’s proposal certainly won’t qualify as ‘reform,’ as the president and The Washington Post (also in its news columns) call it.”

To fully appreciate the gravamen of this parenthetical charge, you have to appreciate the lengths to which newspaper editors will go to insulate themselves from charges of editorial bias, part and parcel of which being their frequent assertions that opinions are confined to the editorial and op-ed pages.

That this criticism issues from someone with such sterling journalistic credentials is also noteworthy.  Far from being an outside critic, Samuelson is very much a part of the journalistic establishment, and for him to fault the papers’ journalistic judgment — particularly when it was extraneous to the subject of his piece — is sure to be noted by his editors and colleagues.

Which is just to say that it was a brave thing he did, and something that he probably would not have done had he not been seriously exercised by the subject, and the papers’ treatment of it.

That frustration resonates in these parts because, like Samuelson, The Media Institute too is closely allied with media companies — most notably by the fact that they provide virtually all of our operating support — and yet we have felt the frequent need these days to be critical of their journalistic performance.

Many years ago I co-authored a content analysis of The New York Times and published the results in National Review.  The article was titled “Is It True What They Say About The New York Times?” and much to the dismay of many of NR’s readers, we found that the paper’s public affairs reporting, on its news pages, was balanced, and contrasted sharply with the opinions on the editorial and op-ed pages.

Hard to imagine anyone writing such a piece today, about the Times or the Post. 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Washington Post’s Health Care Coverage: The Whole Megillah

The Washington Post published last Sunday what is probably their best piece ever about the health care debate.  The irony is that the story was written not by a Post reporter but by the newspaper’s ombudsman, and the thrust of his article was reader unhappiness with the superficiality of the paper’s coverage of this issue

As one of them put it, "’Your paper’s coverage continues in the "horse race" mode.  Who’s up, who’s down … political spin, personal political attacks.’"

Lamentably, the same could be said about much of the mainstream media’s coverage of health care, and not just of health care but of a range of public policy issues, particularly those with an important economic component.

Consider, for instance, the remarkable announcement that issued from the White House on Aug. 25.  The federal deficit, they said, would rise by $9 trillion during the 10-year period from 2010 to 2019.  This amounted to an increase of $2 trillion more than the White House had estimated as recently as February.

Now if, at the very moment that announcement was made, the entire West Wing had collapsed into rubble, and the head of the OMB been struck deaf and dumb, the news might have taken on a kind of visual impact both for the media, and for the rest of us.

But there were no visuals, and so the news was reported in much the same way that TV news anchors announce a jump in the pump price of unleaded.  It was big.  It was a number.  It was Yet Another Example of Mankind’s Fatal Flaws.  (The news anchor’s burden, you know, stories like these.)

In other words, it was nothing at all.  Nothing anyone could be expected to relate to or get a handle on.  Five minutes after hearing the news so reported, the only concern on most people’s minds was what they were having for dinner.

And who could blame them?  For most people a billion dollars is hard to imagine; a trillion is incomprehensible.  And that’s the very point.  The missing ingredient in media coverage of the health care debate, and of the nation’s fiscal policy, is not what the polls or pundits are saying.  Nor is it insight into how politicians plan to spin or parlay these issues to their advantage.

The missing ingredient is the economic impact.  How, for instance, will the government finance such large deficits?  What will the impact be on the credit markets?  On the U.S. dollar?  With the government commanding so much of the investing pie, will there be enough left over to fund private sector needs?  And if so, at what interest rates?

Assuming a constant velocity in their capacity for error, what’s to stop a deficit that is said to have risen 28 percent in the past six months from rising another 28 percent in the next six?

Similar questions mark the health care debate.  What’s the plan?  Is it to provide insurance for people who currently have none?  Or is it to put a brake on rising costs?  Can a plan that attempts to do both really be “deficit neutral"?  And if it’s not, what’s the downside to that?

In the same piece cited at the beginning of this note, the Post’s ombudsman links to an earlier story written by a former reporter.  Called “Myths About Health Care Around the World,” this article provides some useful, if not completely convincing, perspective on the health care debate.  The author points out that Medicare, after all, is a government-run program, but he also points to countries like Japan and Germany that have private insurance with private doctors and hospitals and very efficient systems.

Reading it, one gets the inkling of an idea that perhaps there is a route to meaningful and beneficial health care reform, but it’s unlikely to happen if the media, through their pursuit of "horse race" and politicized coverage of this issue (the Pew Foundation says 72 percent of the Post’s stories were of this sort), keep people in the dark about the important details.

That way lies nothing but anger, frustration, and contempt — first for the politicians but, just a short step behind, for the media as well.

The Washington Post’s ombudsman appears to understand that now.  When will the paper’s editors and reporters?