NY Times Distorts Bush's Social Security Plan
By Bob Kohn
Anger is a great motivator for blogging, and blogging is a great pacifier for the angry.
Since the publication of "Journalistic Fraud" and this blog, I noticed a modicum of effort by the Times to rectify its blatant practice of slanting its lead sentences against President Bush and his policies.
Of course, the Times has continued to slant the news against Bush and the Republicans using less obvious techniques: story selection (stories on Delay's ethics, but not that of Reid, Pelosi and other Democrats) and story placement (Abu Graib prison front-page ad nauseaum), but the leads, at least, seemed straighter.
Well, I've taken over a month off from blogging and look what's happened.
Here's what Bush said about Social Security at his press conference this week:
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"I propose a Social Security system in the future where benefits for low-income workers will grow faster than benefits for people who are better off."
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Here's how a Times competitor, the New York Sun, reported the news in its lead:
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WASHINGTON--President Bush last night tried to shore up support for his proposal to overhaul Social Security, saying he would endorse a policy to increase benefits for lower-income Americans in his push to make the system solvent.
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Here's how USA Today reported the news:
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WASHINGTON--President Bush endorsed for the first time Thursday a Social Security plan that would slow future increases in benefits for middle- and upper-income workers.
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Now, a more accurate lead may have been: "President Bush last night endorsed for the first time a Social Security plan that would increase benefits for lower-income workersand slow future benefit increases for middle- and upper-income Americans." But both the Sun and USA Today got the story essentially correct.
Here's how the news-manipulators at the New York Times reported the same news:
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WASHINGTON--President Bush called Thursday night for cutting Social Security benefits for future retirees to put the system on sound financial footing, and he proposed doing so in a way that would demand the most sacrifice from higher-income people while insulating low-income workers.
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"CUTTING"?? This is entirely misleading, as that President Bush suggested nothing of the sort. The intent was clear: frighten as many seniors as possible and fuel the flames of criticism and demagoguery being engineered by the grey lobby and the Democrats and let that revererate through the liberal press.
To be sure no one missed the point, the Times ran the story under the headline, "BUSH CITES PLAN THAT WOULD CUT SOCIAL SECURITY."
I wonder just how many newspaper across the country used the "cutting" spin on their front pages.
In this morning's paper, the Times ran a front-page "news analysis" (read: editorial), appearing above-the-fold, under the headline and lead:
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PRESIDENT BUSH'S BIG SOCIAL SECURITY GAMBLE
WASHINGTON, April 29--In proposing on Thursday night to cut Social Security benifte for future generation of retirees, President Bush made two big bets, one political, one on the substance of his policy, and if he is to succeed in remaking the retirement system, both of them will probably have to break his way.
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Notice how the writer uses his news analysis to make his own fraudulent news account seem legitimate: "In proposing on Thursday night to cut Social Security benefits for future generations of retirees, President Bush..." The analysis was flawed, but the news story was fraudulent.
I'm sorry , but this is the same kind of stuff that infuriated me at the time I conceived "Journalistic Fraud." And if it isn't stopped soon, we're going to see a lot more of it and, be forewarned, it's going to get intense--especially when the Times begins to use it's $3 billion in revenues to support Hillary and destroy all of her opponents.
I think it's time to ask the questions: Has executive editor Bill Keller simply accepted the notion that the news pages are to be used as an instrument of influencing, rather than a means of informing, the public? Is his managing editor Jill Abramson getting so high on pot that it is clouding her journalistic judgment on the proper use of the front page of the once-great newspaper to which she has been entrusted?
Stockholders of the New York Times Company must be asking: why are these people doing this? Look at the stock price of the Times and how it has plummeted in recent weeks. Look at the recent corporate decisions--like buying the useless "About.com" for tens of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, the paper's circulation is down at time when it could be rising with a further push for subscribers in the so-called "red states." But few in the red states are interested in a paper that leans so left that it can't properly report a simple statement by a U.S. president at a news conference.
Alas, poor Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the paper/s publisher--this putz, by the time he's ready to turn the paper over to his children, will have wasted one of the most valuable corporate assets of our time. That'll be a story--one likely to make the New York Times Best Seller list--assuming anyone cares (about the story or the list).
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