Monthly Archives: January 2011

Will the GOP Cut $100 Billion or Not?

Date: January 6, 2011
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: NY Times, Washington Post

The Campaign Desk of the Columbia Journalism Review thinks the New York Times didn’t do all its homework before writing about the Republicans pledge to cut the budget $100 billion this year.  After writing that it would be hard to do, the same reporter, Jackie Calmes, wrote the next day that the GOP is backing off.

Lori Montgomery at The Washington Post apparently didn’t get the memo, even if Congressman Paul Ryan, who made the pledge, did—and then reversed himself.

Ryan acknowledged that the move would save significantly less than the $100 billion Republicans promised during the election. At the time, he said, Republicans were measuring their plans against Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2011. But Democrats failed to enact that request or adopt any other budget blueprint. Instead, the government is operating under a temporary resolution that continues funding at lower, fiscal year 2010 levels through March 4.

Adjusting their goals

As Republicans prepare a new spending plan for the rest of the fiscal year, independent budget analysts said they would have to trim about $85 billion to return to 2008 levels. But with nearly half the fiscal year already gone, Ryan said Republicans are further adjusting their goals and would probably cut about $60 billion from current programs.

"We’ve already achieved some of that [promised] savings by virtue of not" permitting Democrats to fund Obama’s budget request, Ryan said. And he vowed that House Republicans will far exceed their $100 billion goal when they put together their own budget blueprint for the fiscal year that begins in October. That plan will seek not just to shrink government to its size in 2008, before Obama took power and authorized new spending on the economy, Ryan said: It will seek to put the budget on a path to balance.

"We will be cutting $100 billion plus over this calendar year," Ryan said. "If you think we’re stopping shy of $100 billion in cuts, you got another thing coming. We’re going to go way beyond $100 billion."

So have the Republicans lowered their goal or not?

Congressional Votes

Date: January 6, 2011
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Washington Post

Memo to The Washington Post’s ombudsman and national desk:

Curious that The Post this morning wrote about the Democrats who voted against Nancy Pelosi for speaker. What made this vote so compelling when readers can hardly ever get the roll call on momentous legislation? Even online, The Post rarely links to votes so readers can see how their congressman voted on the big issues of the day.

Fact Checkers

Date: January 6, 2011
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Fact-based journalism

This is amusing. Writes the AP in a story about how Obama caved to those who continue to fear monger about “death panels,”

The original House version of the overhaul legislation sought to expand coverage, allowing for discussions every few years. But the plan was dropped after Sarah Palin and other Republicans raised the specter of "death panels" deciding the fate of vulnerable seniors. Those charges were later debunked by several non-partisan fact-checking groups.

Shouldn’t journalists be card-carrying members of “non-partisan fact-checking groups”?

Richard Cohen is not amused.

Are Nuts and Bolts the Only Things Needed to Build a Coalition?

Date: January 6, 2011
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Democratic Message, Democratic principles, E. J. Dionne, GOP message, Message

E.J. Dionne makes the argument that Republicans are too abstract.

Their rhetoric is nearly devoid of talk about solving practical problems – how to improve our health care, education and transportation systems, or how to create more middle-class jobs.

Instead, we hear about things we can’t touch or see or feel, and about highly general principles divorced from their impact on everyday life.

Their passion is not for what government should or shouldn’t do but for "smaller government" as a moral imperative. During the campaign, they put out a nice round $100 billion in spending cuts from which they’re now backing away. It is far easier to float a big number than to describe reductions for student loans, bridges, national parks or medical research.

The problem is that Democrats too often ignore principles and instead get wonkish. Such an approach assumes voters make rational decisions based on specific policies. They don’t. Why else would lower middle class people, especially men, vote for the party that is set on destroying it? Instead those hurt most by Republican economic policies vote for GOPers because they like their principles.

Of course, they may like Democratic principles, too, but Democrats spend little time articulating them and instead let the Republicans define those principles for them. The same is true for overall messages. During the time I worked with Virginia politicians, I found far too many unconcerned with delivering overarching messages and much more concerned with budgets for direct mail.

Dionne also errs when he suggests that “men aren’t angels, but the professors in Congress seem to believe that another great abstraction, ‘the free market,’ can obviate the need for messy and complicated statutes.” The Democrats problem is that they have constantly offered “messy and complicated statues” that are seen by voters as examples of Congressional mischief and malfeasance. Laws, as Philip Howard has argued, are far too complicated. They should be more concise and set out principles and overarching goals and leave the details to those carrying them out. That, of course, are the hate “government bureaucrats.,” who are left to follow arcane and specific rules embodied in laws and necessarily eschew commonsense.

Dionne, however, has one thing right, as he continues his assault on the media.

If journalism in a democracy is about anything, it is about bringing the expansive rhetoric of politicians down to earth and holding them accountable for how their ideas translate into policies that affect actual human beings.

It may be easier to report windy speeches about "liberty" and "entrepreneurship" than to do the grubby work of examining budgets, regulations, programs and economic consequences. But journalists surely want to be more than stenographers.

One wonders if they really do.

“The Big Short”

Date: January 6, 2011
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Books

If you thought reading about derivatives trading would be boring, think again. Michael Lewis, who wrote "Liar’s Poker" and "The Blind Side" tells the story of the 2008 financial meltdown through the eyes of a half dozen men, none of who are likely be recognizable names to you, but who made big bets against the subprime mortgage market and were rewarded.

These men, mostly from small boutique—and sometimes barely solvent—investment firms are an idiosyncratic bunch. One is a certified sufferer of Asperger’s disorder. They are thought out of their minds because they had what was lacking on Wall St.: commonsense. They were sometimes ostracized because of their beliefs.

Much of the story is about how these half dozen or so men first did what every investor should do: examine what they are buying. When they did, they found mortgages bonds rated aaa but which contained mostly mortgages to people who could not afford the homes.  Many of the subprime mortgage bonds were full of mortgages that could not possible be repaid. Some mortgages were structured so that the borrower was likely to default when the first payment came due.

If only a small portion of the mortgages failed, the bond itself would implode. Their stories are sometimes hilarious and their methods often unorthodox as they tried to find out what the market saw in these bonds that they didn’t.  Many were filled with self-doubt, unable to believe that they could see disaster coming whereas the titans of Wall St. saw nothing but blue skies ahead. They spent a lot of their time trying to prove themselves wrong.  Fortunately, they made the investment in CDOs against the bonds, despite their self-doubt.

Their story, told with Lewis’s sense of humor, is delightful. They reveal a Wall St. that is insular, aloof and not nearly as smart as it think it is.

What is most frightening about this account is that the 2008 crisis was totally avoidable, if only Wall Street wasn’t so oblivious to the obvious. Anyone who looked behind the mortgage bonds being traded during the early 2000’s would see that they were doomed to fail. The market was simply unsustainable.

But the almighty traders and leading Wall St. firms never looked closely at what they were trading. Those putting the mortgage bonds together—as well as those in the rating agencies who dared not look into them—did so without scrutiny, not just from the SEC or the CFTC, but from the executives of Wall St. firms.

It’s clear that when it comes to evaluating investments in the traditional sense, that is without complex derivatives, most on Wall St. are no more sophisticated than the common investor.

But we, of course, get to pay the price of their incompetence.

Internet Gaining on TV and Newspapers?

Date: January 5, 2011
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Cable News, CNN, Declining readership, Fox News, Mainstream Media, MSNBC, NPR, Online Access, Rush Limbaugh, Talk Radio, Television

Well, yes…and not necessarily. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has another survey, out this week, that’s informative, if you don’t misinterpret the findings. The clearest finding is that the Internet is becoming more of the medium for news for many folks than television. It certainly hasn’t overtaken it among all groups, though it has among people 19-29 years old. And even that conclusion is somewhat suspect. After all, you can watch a TV program online. Who gets the credit as the source—TV or “the internet”?

This fuzzy conclusion gets more obscured when you read about the internet’s supremacy over newspapers, which applies to the overall population, though not among the 50+ set. After all, whereas most folks don’t go to the internet to watch TV, I’ll bet a sizable portion of those who look for news online indeed go to newspapers sites. Which makes the conclusions here a little misleading.

[M]ore people continue to cite the internet than newspapers as their main source of news, reflecting both the growth of the internet, and the gradual decline in newspaper readership (from 34% in 2007 to 31% now).

…The internet also has grown as a news source for people ages 50 to 64; currently 34% say the internet is their main source of national and international news, nearly equal to the number who cite newspapers (38%), though still far below television (71%). There has been relatively little change in the how people age 65 and older get their news. The internet has risen to 14% from 5% in 2007, but is still far behind newspapers (47%) and television (79%) as a main source.

I wish the good folks at the Pew center (and I love their work) would have worded it differently.  But reading further, there are nuggets that should influence how political questions are debated.

College graduates are about as likely to get most of their national and international news from the internet (51%) as television (54%). Those with some college are just as likely as college grads to cite the internet as their main source (51%), while 63% cite television. By contrast, just 29% of those with no more than a high school education cite the internet while more than twice as many (75%) cite television.

For political operatives that may mean deploying different spokespeople for different media. For example, if it’s the lower middle class you want to target, send those folks who can sound as if they are one of them. I don’t mean that condescendingly. Joe Biden may make a good source on TV news because he has a working class persona, whereas John Kerry may not.

There is some unabashed good news in the survey results.

Reflecting the slow decline in the proportion of people getting most of their national and international news from television, the numbers specifically citing cable news outlets or broadcast networks as their main news source has fallen. When asked where on television they get most of their news, 36% name a cable network such as CNN, the Fox News Channel or MSNBC; 22% name ABC News, CBS News or NBC News; and 16% say they get most of their national and international news from local news programming.

TV is constrained by its format. Rarely are issues covered in-depth and without prejudice or bias. If more people read the news online, they would be caught up in the world of hyperlinks, taking them to new sources that allow them to gain more knowledge and hopefully a broader range of viewpoints, though that’s not guaranteed.

But here’s the best news. The percentage of people who say they get their news from radio has remained constant over the past 20 years. Alas, they all aren’t listening to NPR; many are Limbaugh ditto-heads. According to Carroll Doherty of the Pew Center, NPR’s audience mirrors the general demographics of the population, so both young and old are listening. Why has radio remained constant? Because traffic hasn’t improved most places. Radio listeners tend to be in their cars at the time.

Oppo Research on Reporters

Date: January 5, 2011
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Jane Mayer, Koch brothers, Right-wing echo chamber

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.

The View from Somewhere Isn’t Where It’s At

Date: January 5, 2011
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: "He said, she said", NPR, Objectivity vs. Balance, Political Labels

Part two of David Folkenflick’s excellent report on the news media is online. And indeed Jay Rosen, who I cited in yesterday’s post, makes the case for reporters revealing more of their beliefs. In fact, it is the focus of this report.

"If they’ve been covering a beat for a while, I’d like to know what fascinates them about their beat, what they think are the biggest challenges facing the nation, who some of their heroes and villains are, and any convictions — deeply held convictions — they’ve developed by reporting on the story over a long period of time."

"We can tell where the person is coming from and apply whatever discount rate we want to what they’re saying," Rosen says. "I also think that it’s more likely to generate trust. And this is the main reason why I recommend ‘here’s where I’m coming from’ replace ‘the view from nowhere.’ "

I agree completely with Rosen’s critique of today’s media and the “view from nowhere.”  Peter Goodman, who recently left the New York Times to become business editor at the Huffington Post describes the problem pitch perfectly.

"This is not about ranting; it’s not about working for a particular partisan interest or set of interests; it’s not about getting individuals elected," Goodman says. "It’s about the same mission that I think has been part of quality journalism forever, which is uncovering truths that aren’t so easy to uncover."

He says The Times gave him great leeway to follow his reporting, wherever it led. But Goodman says his reporters at the Huffington Post will have some liberties other news organizations might not afford.

"I don’t want them feeling like they have to hand in [stories that say], ‘Well, these people said this, those people said that; here, dear reader — you know, you figure it out,’ " Goodman says. "I would like them engaged in a process of getting to a satisfying conclusion." [emphasis added]

In other words, “he said, she said” journalism, another phrase that may be Rosen’s.  While this type of journalism is well accepted in America (and in the NPR report former Post editor Len Downie vigorously defends it) to other western countries it is laughable.

"I’m rather extreme on this subject," says Simon Jenkins, the former editor in chief of the center-right Times of London who now writes columns for the liberal Guardian. "I find American newspapers boring — and biblical. I cannot believe how dull they are. These are news sheets for a genre of readers who want vast slabs of information and get entertainment in a different way. And they are micro-monopolies, all of them."

Still, I can’t bring myself to agree with Rosen’s conclusions. I object when reports describe even institutions as “liberal” or “conservative,” “left” or “right.” What that does is signal the reader to be ready to discount or embrace the following viewpoint because it tracks (or doesn’t) with their view of the world.  Labeling these institutions really does nothing to combat the rampant “view from nowhere.” And having reporters reveal their politics, if that indeed is what Rosen is suggesting, will be an impotent solution to the problem. I think what it will lead to is the same thing we now see: groups from either side demanding that a news outlet add more conservative or progressive reporters to offset a perceived imbalance, as they do now with opinion writers. Then what? Do you have a conservative and a progressive covering the same beat? Otherwise, if it’s one or the other, the opposite inclined reader will not read the stories at all or complain incessantly about them.

Besides, it’s hard to pinpoint where someone is coming from based solely on a few biographical paragraphs. I am a progressive and support many progressive causes. But I also think government is seriously flawed, inefficient and ineffective. I think the age at which one can start to draw Social Security should be raised. Gun control laws are largely ineffective. If I were a reporter, would I need to reveal all my views on each issue?

Let reporters gather the facts, weigh them on the “truth-o-meter if possible, and report the truth as close as they can divine it. The truth is what readers want. The reason newspapers and other MSM are failing is not because we don’t know the ideologies of the reporters and editors. It’s because they are not giving us information we can use. The are stenographers of the status quo, worried more about their continued access to the centers of power than in revealing what’s really going on.