Boys in DC marching for a cause get attacked, shamed and punished

On Jan. 18 a group of students, mostly from Catholic high schools in Kentucky, were in Washington, DC. to attend the March for Life. The group was near the Lincoln Memorial, and nearby were two other groups, the Black Israelites and members of the Indigenous Peoples’ March (IPM), both of whom also had events that same day.

Some videos made public showed a member of the IPM, Nathan Phillips, standing right in front of one of the students, who happened to be wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. Phillips banged on his hand-held drum and chanted, while the student merely stood smiling at him. As things progressed, other students in the group began reciting a school cheer in response to Phillips’ chanting.

Based upon information on social media, videos that showing only a small piece of the nearly two hours of the entire event, the “Shoot First, Ask Questions Later, Or Not” media sprang into action.

The story that dominated was that the students confronted Phillips, but the truth is that the students stayed where they were, and Phillips deliberately walked up to the student and stood there chanting at him for quite a while. The Black Israelites shouted profane and vulgar slurs. Phillips, it turns out, has a checkered past. 

Some of the offending media have acknowledged their mistakes, and some – gasp! – even apologized for their colossal blunder.

The opportunity provided by a group of white boys from Christian schools, some wearing MAGA hats – a gift from Heaven – effectively buried any chance of their reason for being in DC from getting ink or air-time. That doesn’t fit the general media narrative, anyway.

And why is the phrase “Make America Great Again” suddenly racist, when it was seen as patriotic when former President Bill Clinton used it? And before that when former President Ronald Reagan used it?

These students were not in DC to be an easy target for irresponsible media and the two activist groups to attack. They were there to participate in the March for Life, which is a statement for protecting the developing lives of babies not yet born.

Things sure have changed over recent years and decades. Take how we react to unwanted pregnancies, for example. 

Time was when an unmarried female got pregnant – a fairly rare event, years ago – one of two things usually happened: First, she and the father married and became a family, as they should have. Or in other cases she went to live with relatives in another town, carried her baby to term, gave it up for adoption, and then returned to her home. 

Less often, the mother would have a so-called  “back-alley” abortion, or a self-induced abortion. Both were very dangerous. Planned Parenthood reports, “In 1965, illegal abortions made up one-sixth of all pregnancy- and childbirth-related deaths.”

Then, things changed. The Encyclopedia Britannicaexplains: “The case began in 1970 when ‘Jane Roe’ – a fictional name used to protect the identity of the plaintiff, Norma McCorvey – instituted federal action against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, Texas, where Roe resided. The Supreme Court disagreed with Roe’s assertion of an absolute right to terminate pregnancy in any way and at any time and attempted to balance a woman’s right of privacy with a state’s interest in regulating abortion.“

Thus the floodgates were opened; abortion became a big business. Various estimates place the total number of abortions since Roe from 50 million to more than 60 million, as pregnant women availed themselves of their right to privacy in getting their pregnancy terminated.

Differing ideas exist as to when life begins. And most of us would not agree with aborting a human life still in the womb. But that question has not been resolved well enough to establish a definitive rule on when life begins, and after which abortions may not be performed.

In 2015 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the following statistics:

** Nearly 75 percent of abortions are surgical

** 41 percent women who had abortions in the U.S. had no other children

** 44 percent of women who had abortions in the U.S. had at least one previous abortion

** 86 percent of women who had abortions in the U.S. were unmarried

** 41 percent of abortions are among women and teens 24-years-old and younger

And the Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, noted: “At current rates, an estimated 1/4 of American women will have an abortion by the age of 45.” And, “About 15,000 abortions are attributed to rape and incest — representing 1.5 percent of all abortions.”

If there is good news on this horrible practice, it is that the number of abortions in the U.S. is declining.

The bad news is that acceptance of abortions at any time is growing. New York just passed a law that means a baby born at 1:15 p.m. was eligible to be aborted at 1:14:30 p.m.

Unwanted pregnancies need to be prevented, not expunged. We know what causes them, and there are means to protect against them. The most effective among them is abstinence. It never fails, and it is free.

Freedom of the press: a privilege to be honored by practitioners

Freedom of the press is a hallmark of the American experiment. Looking back to the days when the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights were created, we can see what the Founders had in mind.

Thomas Jefferson believed that the press was to serve both intellectual and political liberty. One goal, he wrote, was to establish that “man may be governed by reason and truth.” And desiring that, all avenues of truth must be open to the people. “The most effectual hitherto found,” he said, “is the freedom of the press.”

To Jefferson, the press was charged with the solemn duty to provide the truth to the people so that they may be well informed.

Press freedom was thought so important that it was specifically provided with protections in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in the Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments to the Constitution.

Press freedom has risen to the fore since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. His pugnacious attitude, that so often produces testy responses to what he sees as press offenses, has brought this issue into the news on a regular basis.

Members of the press and their allies see his criticisms of their work as attacking press freedom. But Trump’s allies agree with his position that some in the press have an anti-Trump bias that produces a steady stream of “fake news” and biased coverage.

Like Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin also championed press freedom, but did so while holding a realistic view of the real nature of the press. In 1789, in “An Account of the Supremest Court of Judicature in Pennsylvania, viz., The Court of the Press,” Franklin describes the operational environment of the press, with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.

In the first section, entitled “Power of this Court,” he wrote: “It may receive and promulgate accusations of all kinds, against all persons and characters among the citizens of the State, and even against all inferior courts; and may judge, sentence, and condemn to infamy, not only private individuals, but public bodies, &c., with or without inquiry or hearing, at the court's discretion”(emphasis in the original). 

And who shall be eligible for membership in the Court? Well, “about one citizen in 500 who by education, or practice in scribbling, has acquired a tolerable stile as to grammar and construction.” “This 500^thpart of the citizens have the privilege of accusing and abusing the other 499 parts, at their pleasure.”

Unlike courts of law, the press is not controlled by a higher power, which enables the carryings-on of mischief and misfeasance, if it decides to do so. It may use anonymous sources, which may or may not testify truthfully, since the press can not impose, nor need not fear fines or jail time. Mere accusations may be treated as absolute truth. Accusations may be made by anyone, against anyone, at any time, by the press.

Franklin wrote, “The accused is allowed no grand jury to judge of the truth of the accusation before it is publicly made, nor is the Name of the Accuser made known to him, nor has he an Opportunity of confronting the Witnesses against him; for they are kept in the dark, as in the Spanish Court of Inquisition.”

Whenever such misfeasance does occur, the press is protected by the freedom of the press guarantee of the First Amendment, and that protection is promptly and routinely called upon, as we have seen in the recent past.

The picture painted by Franklin is of a power with no limiting mechanism; it can do as it pleases without supervision, governed only by the integrity and adherence to ethical boundaries, which is completely voluntary for those working in the press.

Unfortunately, there is ample exercising of that un-governed power in play today, the defense of which seems to be only that “Trump made me do it.”

Looking at the broad swath of professional misbehavior in the press, government, and elsewhere, one might well conclude that Donald Trump is the most powerful human being ever. He is able to compel people to willfully abandon their honor, their integrity, and their professional ethics, all because of their overpowering hatred for him.

Being a journalist is an important job. As Jefferson said, providing the truth is essential to the nation, and he named the press as the mechanism to do that. Being a good journalist is very demanding; it requires a very high degree of self-discipline to prevent journalists from allowing personal ideas and political positions to color their reporting. Sadly, many journalists have shown themselves unable to maintain that high level of personal performance.

Press bias is in ample supply and is easy to find, so long as the searcher is as objective in his search as the press is supposed to be in search of the truth.

Can journalism ever restore its reputation as a trustworthy element in America? It would be helpful if there were a penalty for straying from the straight and narrow.

It will be a long uphill journey. The sooner that journey begins, the better.

The economy’s strong performance has Trump enemies all flummoxed

Citing President Donald Trump’s “nativist fear” in the opening paragraph of an article in The New York Times titled “Republicans Have a Humming Economy to Tout, but Trump Rhetoric Muddies the Message,” writers Astead W. Herndon and Sydney Ember proceeded to analyze the economy of Trump’s second year.

The article does a passable job of showing the strength of the economy, and it fairly criticizes Trump’s penchant for careless or objectionable language and how it interferes with good news.

Here are some reminders of the economy’s strength:

* 250,000 jobs added in October: Hotels and restaurants added 42,000 jobs; health-care companies hired 36,000 workers; manufacturers filled 32,000 jobs; construction companies took on 32,000 workers

* Unemployment 3.7 percent

* Average Hourly Earnings have risen 3.1 percent over the last year

* Third quarter GDP +3.5 percent

However, Herndon’s and Ember’s comment, "President Trump’s blistering message of nativist fear has become the dominant theme of the campaign’s last days..." is an attention-getter.

“Nativist” clearly implies that Trump favors the interests of Americans, as if it is wrong for the leader of a country to favor that nation over others.

Adding the word “fear,” however, drives the article over the cliff. It charges Trump with being afraid of immigrants and for the country to allow people to immigrate here. That’s an interesting position for a man to hold who has an immigrant wife. It’s equally as foolish as the criticism that he is anti-Semitic, with a son-in-law who is Jewish and a daughter who married him who has adopted Judaism.

As Herndon and Ember are reporters, neither having psychology or psychiatry credentials, their analysis of the president is immediately thrown open to suspicion of reportorial bias, which, of course, is unheard of at The Times (cough, cough).

To any thinking person, the idea that we should at long last secure our borders and tighten up immigration policy to prevent gang members, murderers, drug dealers, child traffickers and other undesirables from getting into the country is a no-brainer.

Not content to go quietly into that good night like his predecessors have sensibly done, Barack Obama, the blessedly formerpresident, is making the rounds criticizing his successor.

Since Election Day 2016 when Trump was declared the winner, the economy has been doing great, and as time has passed that performance has only gotten better. But Obama claims to have started it all  “Where do you think that started?” he asked an audience.

Obama took office in January 2009, as the recession was winding down, officially ending in June. Called “The Great Recession,” the period of contraction lasted 18 months, less than half that of The Great Depression.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta called the recovery “atypical and very weak compared to other post World War II recoveries.” Obama’s policies were responsible for this.

After a recession the economy will eventually produce a weak recovery pretty much on its own, but needs help to prosper. Like a car out of gas at the top of a hill, it can roll toward the filling station on its own until it hits flat land. Then it needs help. Under Obama’s watch, he used the brake on the downhill roll, and didn’t push after that. And that is his basis for taking credit for today’s good economy.

What has transpired since Trump won the 2016 election had nothing to do with anything Obama did, because the results we see today came from doing the opposite. Remember Obama saying, “When somebody says  … that he’s going to bring all these jobs back. Well how exactly are you going to do that?” … “What magic wand do you have?”

Trump’s response: “Here, hold my coffee!”

Obama now defends the thousands of people traveling through Mexico toward the U.S. border, with the idea of busting through our border as they did in Guatemala and Mexico.

"Now the latest, they're trying to convince everybody to be afraid of a bunch of impoverished, malnourished refugees," Obama said, imitating a contestant in a stand-up comedy tryout.  “They’re telling you the existential threat to America is a bunch of poor refugees 1,000 miles away,” Obama said. “They’re even taking our brave troops away from their families for a political stunt at the border. And the men and women of our military deserve better than that.”

As poet Browning said (sort of), “How do I deceive thee? Let me count the ways.”

* Impoverished and mal-nourished? It’s no picnic, but people provide food along the way and often transportation, thanks to their financial backers.

* A serious threat? Yes. Existential? No. Obama grossly exaggerated.

* A bunch of poor refugees? Some of the 5,000–7,000 no doubt are; some, perhaps many, surely are not.

* Taking troops away from their family? Troops deploy; they are sent places, as Obama surely remembers from sending them to the border, and to Eastern Europe.

The Democrats’ desperation is palpable. They’ve resorted to threats, intimidation, exaggeration and untruths trying to save their party in today’s election, and to save the country from the good things that have occurred since that great Election Night in 2016.

Distorting Trump’s MS-13 comments and Israel’s defensive border action

Recognizing that secure borders are essential to a free and safe country, President Donald Trump is insistent on securing our borders, particularly the southern one, and would gladly build a wall to accomplish that necessary goal.

Whether it is because Donald Trump is the one emphasizing securing the border, or whether it is because the Left is soft on illegal immigration is less important than the high degree of foolishness of their position. They couch their position on “feelings” rather than national security and protecting Americans from the expense of supporting people who come here illegally, or from those who are dangerous criminals.

Some of the more recognizable names on the Left, particularly many people elected to Congress, make statements that can easily lead one to believe that they are more concerned with the feelings of those illegals than of their fellow Americans or of their own constituents.

A tripwire of these statements is Trump’s use of the word “animals” to describe members of the violent MS-13 gang and other ultra-violent intruders. And among those objecting to the use of the term is the agenda media, some examples of which follow:

* The Washington Post: "Trump compares illegal immigrants to 'animals'"

* The New York Times: "Trump calls some unauthorized immigrants 'animals' in rant"

* Huffington Post: "Trump refers to immigrants as 'animals.' Again."

* USA Today: "Trump ramps up rhetoric on undocumented immigrants: 'These aren't people. These are animals.'"

* Vox: "Trump on deported immigrants: 'They're not people. They're animals.'"

But, of course, they were all wrong. Were they wrong because they have no idea about how to produce an accurate news story, or because the truth intrudes on their Leftist and anti-Trump agenda?

Unless you can’t understand English or have an agenda, anyone who listened to, watched or read the entire text of the statement knew immediately that Trump was not talking about all illegal aliens or immigrants, but was addressing the vile and repulsive members of the venomous and violent MS-13 gang. The gang, whose motto is “kill, rape and control,” has a left a long trail of violence in its wake.

However, Trump is wrong in using the word “animals” to describe MS-13 members. In doing so he has insulted animals everywhere by comparing them to the lowlife MS-13 creatures.

While the U.S. has problems with people who try and succeed at sneaking into the country, a nation with perhaps the most serious border problems is Israel.

The Jewish nation has accomplished great things in medicine, technology, and agriculture, and operates on democratic principles; it is a bright spot in a troubled world region. Despite this impressive record of accomplishments that benefit the entire world, some of its neighbors want Israel gone. It is surrounded by relatively huge Arab nations, with Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan either on its border, or not many miles away.

The Palestinians have been conducting protests on the Gaza border for weeks, and they claim that the border protests are peaceful and civilian-led, which was parroted by elements of the western media. But in fact, they have grown more violent over time. The protest earlier this month found participants creating dark smoke to hide their movements toward the border by setting tires on fire, trying to break down the border barriers and starting fires in Israeli territory by flying kites over the border that had canisters of burning gasoline on them.

Having warned the Palestinians not to attempt to cross the border, when the warnings were ignored the Israeli Defense Forces defended their border, resulting in 64 Palestinians being killed and hundreds more wounded. Unfortunately, that included a few women and children. More information on that follows.

This defensive border action received a harsh response from the UN Human Rights Council, whose chief labeled the Israeli response "wholly disproportionate," and called for an international investigation, as well as widespread condemnation from the anti-Israel media.

This is not a surprise, given the non-secret disdain for the Jewish state of many UN members. While the automatic response of Israel-haters everywhere is to blame Israel for the so-called “unconscionable murder of women, children and peaceful Palestinians,” the truth is quite different from that account.

A Hamas terrorist who was captured after he had breached the border told Israeli officials that the violence in the protests was the work of his organization. And an official of Hamas, Salah Bardawil, said, “In the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of them were Hamas,” members of the Palestinian terrorist organization.

The captured Hamas terrorist also said that the Islamic terrorist organization used women and children as shields, promising them they would be safe if they moved to the front line of the protest.

The Hamas terrorists among the protesters were armed with Molotov cocktails, guns and knives, and hid behind women and children in hopes of being able to break through the border barrier.

The accurate information about the terrorists taking part in this violent Hamas attack is not readily available, due to the bias of the United Nations and media outlets.

The American media’s fraud and corruption are at an all-time high

Recent dishonesty demonstrates why the mainstream media is largely no longer worthy of the trust of the American people.

Following the massacre of movie-goers in an Aurora, Colorado theater early last Friday morning, ABC’s Brian Ross twisted himself into knots to connect the violence with the Tea Party on “Good Morning America” with George Stephanopoulos. Here is the text.

Stephanopoulos: I’m going to go to Brian Ross. You’ve been investigating the background of Jim Holmes here. You found something that might be significant.

Ross: There’s a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado Tea Party site as well, talking about him joining the Tea Party last year. Now, we don’t know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it’s Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.

So, Mr. Ross, if you don’t know “if this is the same Jim Holmes,” why even mention this? It’s not like “Jim Holmes” is so unusual a name that it couldn’t be shared by multiple individuals. Is wild speculation your idea of responsible journalism? Or, are you just taking advantage of a horrible crime and the pain it caused to score cheap political points for your own ideology?

Even if it was the same Jim Holmes, there was no indication that the shooting had any connection whatsoever with the Tea Party. Like the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords last year, this is another pitiful and failed media attempt to tie the Tea Party to violent acts.

ABC issued a correction, and then an apology, and that likely will be the extent of its efforts at contrition. However, the family of the man Mr. Ross falsely connected to the shooting was still getting death threats days later.

Question: How can anyone trust Brian Ross’ reporting hereafter, or that of ABC?

The cable network MSNBC got caught manipulating a comment by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, totally changing the context of a statement he made in order to ridicule and demean him.

The fraud that MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell palmed off on her viewers painted Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch elitist who doesn’t understand how retail commerce works.

Ms. Mitchell introduced a video clip, saying “I get the feeling – take a look at this – that Mitt Romney has not been to too many Wawa’s [convenience stores] along the roadside in Pennsylvania.” In the clip, Mr. Romney comments: “I was at Wawa’s, I wanted to order a sandwich.  You press the little touch tone keypad, alright, you just touch that, and you know, the sandwich comes at you, touch this, touch this, touch this, go pay the cashier, there’s your sandwich.  It’s amazing.”

Ms. Mitchell and her accomplice yuck it up at the candidate’s obvious ignorance of this common method of selling food: “It’s amazing,” she smirks.

But she pulled a fast one on viewers who trust her to honestly tell them what is going on the in the world. What actually happened was that Mr. Romney, prior to relating the Wawa’s anecdote, commented on how a friend had a simple procedure badly mangled by incompetent government bureaucracy that required him to fill out a 33-page form to notify the government of his change of address. Twice.

He was contrasting government inefficiency with the efficiency and innovative nature of the private sector. But that’s not the message Ms. Mitchell wanted her viewers to get, apparently.

Question: Is Andrea Mitchell’s reporting trustworthy?

After the shooting death of 17 year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Florida, a large number of people, aided by media reports, rushed to judgment accusing Mr. Zimmerman of a racially motivated killing of the young man we all came to know from the photo of an angelic-looking youngster taken when he was 12 years-old.

Whether Mr. Zimmerman committed a crime, or merely defended himself will be determined at trial, which every American – even those knee-jerks who jumped to the conclusion that the shooting was racially motivated – needs to understand is the proper setting for such determinations.

News organizations are expected to accurately report to the public what is known about events. A well-informed public is less likely to react emotionally and inappropriately, as so many did in the Trayvon Martin shooting. These days it seems the mainstream media frequently ignores ethical standards.

Supporting that point is the way NBC News edited the recording of Mr. Zimmerman talking with a police dispatcher, and creating the impression that Mr. Zimmerman had a racial prejudice against Trayvon Martin. It then broadcast this deception on the “Today Show”: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good.  He looks black,” George Zimmerman tells police in NBC’s edited version.

Here, however, is original text of the call:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

In these examples, people were deliberately trying to manipulate you with fraudulent reporting, or they are incompetent. When news organizations slant the news, or manufacture the news, whatever the cause, it is unethical, underhanded and unforgiveable.

Comments are welcome

Liberal U.S. media working to subvert Mitt Romney’s candidacy

The experiences of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney last week illustrate how the media fail to provide adequate, objective and balanced coverage of serious campaign issues.

Campaigning in Colorado last week, Mr. Romney gave an interview to a local TV reporter, no doubt wanting to talk about his ideas for combating the horrible economic conditions, the need for jobs, and other weighty problems that threaten the nation.

The reporter began by asking about Mr. Romney’s inability to connect with Colorado Republicans, and following his 24-second answer then moved to same-sex marriage. Mr. Romney gave what he said was the same answer to this question as he has given from the beginning. The reporter then asked follow-up questions on that same subject. After two minutes of questions and answers on same-sex marriage, the reporter then asked if illegal aliens should receive in-state tuition. And then after that she asked Mr. Romney about medical marijuana.

So, given the opportunity to interview the likely Republican nominee for the office of President of the United States, a local reporter spends three minutes of the four and one-half minute interview asking about social issues.

Mr. Romney had about all he could stand, so he protested, since medical marijuana, same-sex marriage and tuition for illegals are neither the most important issues facing the nation, nor something about which a President of the United States should be concerned, since they are state issues.

And, indeed, there are obviously more important issues needing attention, such as the $16 trillion national debt that runs to $50,000 for every one of the more than 300 million Americans. How about the highest corporate tax rate in the world that makes U.S. corporations less competitive in the world market? How about the 16 percent of American workers – about 13 million, all together – that can’t find a job at all, or are underemployed? What about a nuclear Iran, and the mess in Afghanistan? How about the fact that the Democrats in charge of the U.S. Senate have shirked their obligation to pass a budget for three straight years?

None of that seemed important to the reporter, but she finally did get around to asking questions about energy.

While the Colorado reporter was focusing on less relevant topics, the intrepid investigators at The Washington Post were busy looking into Mr. Romney’s high school days, searching for archaic dirt. And, they found some.

Some of the former governor’s high school classmates from 1965 said that he had indulged in boyish behavior, and one incident allegedly involved forcibly cutting the long blonde hair of a boy a year younger than Mr. Romney, who the classmates said may have been gay. If true, this was clearly wrong and indefensible. But it was nearly 50 years ago in high school, and appears to be an isolated incident. Yet, The Post thought it was important enough for 5,000 words starting on page 1 above the fold. And since then these allegations have “evolved” into proof that Mitt Romney was a homophobic bully. He also is accused of pulling classmate Susie Jones’ hair in the third grade.

The Post’s crack investigators successfully found this 47 year-old story about Mr. Romney (13 times longer ago than the last budget passed by our Democrat-controlled Senate), but gave little attention to Barack Obama’s history with former members of the Weather Underground and his admitted “enthusiastic” drug use, and were unable to find any information about his mysterious college days, including his grades, his formal papers, his days at the Harvard Law Review, his friends, etc.

Some people’s past apparently deserves closer scrutiny than others. You can understand why The Post might regard Mr. Romney’s past as more important: he’s running for President.

It is relevant to note that the family of John Lauber, the victim of Mr. Romney’s alleged brutish haircut, is appalled that their relative would be used for political purposes. His older sister, Christine, was unaware that Mitt Romney, or anyone else, “bullied” her brother, who passed away from liver cancer in 2004, but she was clearly not pleased by the story. “Even if it did happen, John probably wouldn’t have said anything,” she said. “If he were still alive today, he would be furious.”

“The family of John Lauber is releasing a statement saying the portrayal of John is factually incorrect and we are aggrieved that he would be used to further a political agenda,” she said. “There will be no more comments from the family.”

The treatment of Mitt Romney in 2012 and the treatment of Barack Obama in 2008 couldn’t be more different. In the Romney story, an unproved allegation of bullying gets front page treatment from The Washington Post, but admitted drug use, et al, by Barack Obama goes virtually unreported.

By emphasizing peripheral issues like same-sex marriage, illegal alien tuition, medical marijuana, and high school behavior, the liberal media distracts attention from President Obama’s dismal record on the critical economic problems. And in the attempt to discredit Mr. Romney, The Washington Post story denigrates John Lauber’s memory and upsets his family, presumably because of its obligation to inform the public. Well, about some things, anyway.


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Speculative reporting: Media fanning recession fears

On July 4, Jeanine Aversa of the Associated Press gave Americans an Independence Day gift: the news that “[t]he nation lost jobs for a sixth month in a row in June, a storm of pink slips drenching this year’s July Fourth holiday for more than 60,000 Americans and leaving thousands more worried about the future.”

She continued: “Weighed down by energy prices and the housing crisis, employers laid off workers in stores, factories and forsaken building sites. With more job cuts expected in coming months, there’s growing concern that many people will pull back on their spending later this year when the bracing effect of the tax rebates fades, dealing a dangerous setback to the shaky economy. These worries are rekindling recession fears.”

So what’s wrong with this story? Well, it is not objective or neutral; it is laced with opinion, bias and loaded words and phrases.

Consider the phrase “a storm of pink slips drenching this year’s July Fourth holiday,” which conveys the clear implication that the sky is falling, and the phrase ending that sentence, “leaving thousands more worried about the future,” might be true, or might not be. It isn’t substantiated, and beyond that is not necessary to telling us about job losses. This sentence could have been written this way: “The nation lost more than 60,000 jobs in June, the sixth month in a row of job losses.” That is factual, absent any opinion or other unnecessary language, and tells us what we need to know.

The story then speculates that “there’s growing concern that many people will pull back on their spending later this year,” and adds that “[t]hese worries are rekindling recession fears.” Really? How do you know that, Ms. Aversa; where’s the attribution? Whose fears are you referring to: your fears, the American people’s fears? It doesn’t matter that many readers believe her assertion is correct, what matters is whether her assertion actually is correct. She doesn’t backup the statement, and it therefore has no business in an objective news story.

The story also leaves important information that would put the jobs loss in perspective until later, after the writer has raised the reader’s concerns and biased his or her perspective. Eventually, we learn that despite the job losses “[t]he jobless rate held steady at 5.5 percent after jumping in May. Did the jobless rate not move up because 62,000 jobs wasn’t a big enough change to kick the rate up another tenth of a point? Or were there enough new jobs created to balance out the job losses? We really don’t know.

Ms. Aversa then adds that the jobless rate jumped “in May by the most in two decades,” and said that, furthermore, “June’s jobless rate was considerably higher than the 4.6 percent of a year ago.” She does not tell us that the 5.5 percent jobless rate is only a half point above the level that is considered full employment, or that the 4.6 percent rate she alluded to is a good jobless rate that has not been lower since the first half of 2001. She also neglected to tell us that in the months following 9-11 the jobless rate rose to around 6.3 percent, and that since then it fell steadily until early 2007. She also passed up the opportunity to tell readers that the Commerce Department reported in late June that after-tax disposable incomes jumped by 5.7 percent in May, the biggest one-month gain since May 1975, and that after removing the effects of higher gasoline and other products, inflation-adjusted spending rose by a solid 0.4 percent, the best performance since last August.

This is just one more in a long and undistinguished series of misreported economic stories. News items from as far back as last fall claimed the United States economy was in recession, which was demonstrably false. Recession has clearly defined parameters: negative growth for two consecutive quarters. The U.S. economy has undeniably slowed down, but despite all the doom and gloom from the mainstream media has not had even one quarter of negative growth, let alone two of them in succession. Neither a reporter’s proclamation nor opinion polls of Americans are sufficient to create a recession.

The news media shouldn’t tell fairy tales about how good things are when they aren’t very good, of course, but it also shouldn’t tell us that things are worse than they really are. However, sometimes journalistic propriety takes a back seat to making a story more interesting, or burnishing a reporter’s reputation. For example, Ms. Aversa’s opening sentence is certainly more interesting than my version, even if hers contains untruths, half-truths, and speculation.

News doesn’t have to be interesting; it only has to be accurate and objective. Much of what passes for news from the mainstream media is chock full of opinion and speculation. When the media broadly reports economic conditions as worse than they really are, or, as in the case of this story, reports news in a way that creates a false impression in the mind of the reader, there will certainly be a negative effect on how people think and act.

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