Press Criticism

NYT's lame look at the Medicare horse race
Press Criticism | By Greg Marx | Health care
The story explored how the latest Republican proposal to privatize Medicare might affect the 2012 campaign, but failed to describe how the plan would work, or what its substantive impact would be. As such, it did not succeed even at the level of horse race analysis. It's enough to make you wonder: Who is this stuff written for, anyway? More
WSJ story exaggerates "price" of taxing the rich, cherry-picks data
Press Criticism | By Craig Gurian | State government, Taxes
With an attention grabbing headline warning about “the price of taxing the rich,” a subhead explaining that “the top 1% of earners fill the coffers of states like California and New York during a boom — and leave them starved for revenue in a bust,” and an obliging former California economic forecasting official ready to say that “the root of California’s woes is its reliance on taxing the wealthy,” a recent Wall Street Journal article will undoubtedly be brandished in tax fights both in Washington and in state capitals across the country. But none of it adds up. And, interestingly, one needn’t go beyond the four corners of the Journal’s “Saturday Essay” feature to figure that out. More
U.S. economy as tragic victim of circumstance?
Press Criticism | By Greg Marx | Economy
A front-page article in The New York Times chronicled various burdens weighing on the American economy, including debt problems in Europe, budget crises in the states, the risk of a government shutdown, a soft housing market, and, most recently, rising oil prices. But the story omitted a critical factor: the failure of past and present policy-makers to address those challenges. As a result, the story painted a picture of the economy that is grimmer than it needs to be — and let political leaders off the hook. More
Mubarak just became a dictator...this month?
Press Criticism | By Craig Gurian
For years, New York Times reporters (or their editors) had been too "diplomatic" to use the "D" word. More
Deficit hawks or just a fairy tale?
Press Criticism | By Greg Marx | Budget deficit, Media, Politics
A recent Gallup survey about federal spending offered respondents a constrained set of choices — freeze or cut — and the results were promptly parsed in the press to determine who has the upper hand in the coming budget fight. But there is ample evidence that Americans support the vast majority of federal spending — and that talk while deficit worry may be consuming the Beltway, those preferences among the broader public haven’t changed. More
What's the cost of the cuts to Congress?
Press Criticism | By Greg Marx | Politics
When the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to cut its own budget last week, the scant coverage in major outlets represented a missed opportunity to probe what the consequences of the reduction might be — or how previous staff reductions have affected the ability of Congress to perform its work. More
Washington Post's lackluster look at the EPA debate
Press Criticism | By Greg Marx | Environment
You might think it would be hard to produce a news article that is simultaneously a puffy profile of an important government official, a credulous conduit for her leading opponents, a feeble explanation of the actual political dynamic, and a lackluster treatment of substantive policy issues. But that’s what The Washington Post delivered last week with its story about Lisa Jackson, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the industry interests lining up to battle new regulations that the EPA is considering. More
That was terrible reporting
Press Criticism | By Craig Gurian | Taxes
Sometimes there is just no other way to put it. Today, The New York Times, without disclosure, apparently turned its lead story over to Republican Party writers, with two prominent members of the Times’ Washington Bureau giving a pitch-perfect reading of the GOP’s “surrender, tax cuts for multi-millionaires are inevitable” script. More

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