And no surprise, he’s a Wall Street Journal editorial writer, James Taranto:
The world would have been a better place if his parents had died virgins.
H/t Atrios.
Category: Hack Journalism
Adventures in Journamalism
The CJR discovers that the the news media repeatedly uncritically quote anti-worker lobbyists to demonstrate things like the fictitious worker shortage:
Two weeks ago The New York Times wheeled out that old chestnut of Great Recession-era economic reporting: Companies can’t find workers, despite high unemployment.
………
But what really sends the BS meter into the red zone is when you learn that the anecdotes are populated with business people with ties to lobbying groups that news organizations, for whatever reason, fail to disclose.
Take one of the Times’s main anecdotes, Drew Greenblatt, who owns a small manufacturing firm in Baltimore called Marlin Steel Wire and who gets his picture in the Times. This was his third NYT hit in three months. Here are Mr. Greenblatt’s other press hits in June: The NBC Nightly News, PBS Newshour (twice), NPR’s Morning Edition, The Hamilton Spectator. So far this year he’s also been on CNN Newsroom and Fox Business (four times), and in the Financial Times, Reuters, and the Associated Press, plus a number of smaller publications. Two years ago, Greenblatt and his company were the focus of a flattering 2,300 word Atlantic profile and a couple of WaPo profiles in 2001 and 2007. This guy is like the Greg Packer of small manufacturers.
………
Undisclosed in any of these stories is the fact that Greenblatt is an executive-committee member of the board of the National Association of Manufacturers, the powerful DC trade lobby. NAM not only pushes Congress for anti-labor policies (like banning picketing), it lobbies for government-funded workforce training programs (“to be led by the business community,” naturally).
………
A couple of weeks ago, blogger Steve M. at Balloon Juice and No More Mister Nice Blog caught NPR and NBC talking to the same small businessman, Joe Olivo, about how Obama’s health care law is keeping him from hiring for his printing business. Turns out Olivo’s quite the active member of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the big right-wing, pro-corporate lobbying group that was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case against Obamacare, which is called National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. His NFIB connections, needless to say, weren’t disclosed by either broadcast. And Steve M. caught NPR going back to the well a week later, with yet another anti-Obamacare Olivo interview with no disclosure of his lobbying ties.
This is hardly the first time this has happened with Olivo.
………
Here’s how you should assume this works, because it’s how it very often does: A journalist is on deadline on a story and needs an anecdote to make it feel “real” with some color—preferably someone who will add balance and/or support the journalist’s thesis. A speed-dialed call is made to industry flacks to supply a quotable small-business person…and, voilà!
That’s the quick-and-easy way, which is how readers get political activists presented misleadingly as random businessmen.
Take incompetence, mix it with laziness, and a little nudge from their corporate task-masters, and it’s no wonder that I find that the best sources for news about America are foreign.
Snark of the Day
Jonathan Chait, writing in the New York Magazine, has an article, titled, “Beltway Sleazeoids Concerned About Partisanship, about Howard Kurtz’s puff piece on the joint venture between Michael Steele (Mr. Foot in Mouth), and Lanny Davis (Lobbyists for brutal dictators).
His criticism is that Kurtz is far to credulous, and far too laudatory, of their efforts.
I agree. Even on a cursory examination, this is clearly concern trolling for lobbying dollars.
What stands out though is his slam against Howie for his lack of journalistic integrity:
There’s an old saying, “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels,” but patriotism’s scoundrel-cleansing abilities have worn off with time. The newest refuge is surely bipartisanship. Thus, deposed Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele and disgraced lobbyist Lanny Davis have formed their own firm. Howard Kurtz reports — or, at any rate, writes down — that Steele and Davis are pitching their firm dedicated to urging people to “tone down the negativity and personal attacks.”
(emphasis mine)
The criticism for years about Kurtz has been two fold, that he has a conflict of interest because his wife is a paid political operator, and that he is little more than a stenographer for the conservative side of the Beltway consensus.
As to the stenography allegation, Chait must be commended for being clever, clear, and original in his statements.
Heh.
Seen on Facebook
The source is Progressive Libertarianism/
Nope, No Racism Here
Justin Combs excelled at football, and got a 3.75 GPA, and so he got a $54K mertit and athletic scholarship to UCLA.
It appears that the good folks at CNN find this controversial, because it was Shawn “P-Diddy” Combs kid, (no direct link, they don’t deserve it) and they want him to give the money back.
There are plenty of kids who get scholarships whose parents are filthy rich, but they aren’t black, in a profession which is stereotypically black (rap), so there is no question if they should return their scholarships.
I believe that a two word phrase was in the head of whoever whoever mad this post (no name listed) on CNN.
The first word was probably “uppity”, and the second word probably began with the 14th letter in the English alphabet.
H/t Atrios.
The National Review: America’s Source for Crappy Journalism
They had a scoop that Elizabeth Warren, founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Senate Candidate had plagiarized another book.
The problem was that they missed the fact that Warren’s book was published first:
The National Review says Elizabeth Warren is guilty of the gravest crime a writer can commit: Plagiarism. Katrina Trinko compares passages from “All Your Worth: The Ultimate Money Lifetime Plan,” Warren’s book with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, with passages from “Getting on the Money Track,” a book by Rob Black. The passages line up perfectly. The wording and even the punctuation are identical. It’s plagiarism all right. Except it looks very much like Warren is actually the victim.
The National Review headline says “Plagiarism in Elizabeth Warren’s 2006 book.” The body refers to Warren publishing the book “in 2006″ and Black’s book coming out in 2005. That’s true! Except that in 2006 the paperback of Warren’s book was published. The hardcover came out in March of 2005. Black’s book seems to have come out, if Amazon is correct, October 14 2005. (Or, according to Barnes and Noble, July 2005?) Months after Warren’s book. Unless there was an earlier published hardcover version that I can’t find on Amazon, it seems like Black most likely plagiarized Warren.
The National review has since retracted the story.
Nice Takedown
Alex Pareene on Tucker Carlson.
Well worth the read.
Adventures in Hack Journalism
In this case it is draw by crayon libertarian Declan McCullagh with an assist by Greg Sandoval, who have decided that the way to write a story about the suit against apple Apple and the publishers who colluded with them was to show that Apple was going to win this suit by consulting with law profs who have been paid by right wing think tanks or have a long history of opposing anti-trust law.
They quote Geoffrey Manne, who works for the Hoover institute, Dominick Armentano, whose Independent Institute is funded by the Olins, the Kochs, and served as a “straw buyer” for Microsoft for the purchase of ads regarding that antitrust litigation, and Richard Epstein, who is the godfather of libertarian legal theory.
In the process, they ignore the facts of the case, as Time Magazine (of all people) documents:
So the publishers worked urgently to hatch a scheme to raise e-book prices before $9.99 became an “entrenched consumer expectation,” according to the lawsuit. Publishing executives are said to have plotted, cloak-and-dagger-style, during meetings at upscale Manhattan restaurants, and tried to conceal their communications “to avoid leaving a paper trail.” A favorite meeting spot was the Chef’s Wine Cellar, a private room at Picholene, just off Central Park West. It’s clear from the complaint that the Department of Justice went so far as to obtain the mobile-phone records of major-publishing-house CEOs.
Meanwhile, Apple was debating business models as it planned to storm onto the e-book market with the iPad. At one point, according to the lawsuit, Apple “contemplated illegally dividing the digital content world with Amazon,” with audio-video going to Apple and e-books to Amazon. Instead, Apple, led by content honcho Eddy Cue, reached out to the publishers to propose that the industry shift from a wholesale model, in which retailers set the price, to an agency model, in which the publishers set the price and Apple, as the “agent,” would receive a 30% commission.
Apple’s then CEO Steve Jobs described the talks in a now infamous quote that appeared in Walter Isaacson’s Jobs biography: “We told the publishers, ‘We’ll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that’s what you want anyway.’” Apple played a special role in the plot, according to the government, acting as the “spoke” of a wheel of conspiracy by playing the major publishers off one another to ensure they all participated.
Even if Apple were not engaging in an illegal act on its own, it is engaging in an illegal conspiracy to fix prices, but the draw by crayon libertarian cannot extend his Rolodex beyond the usual suspects.
If the DoJ wanted to go RICO on their asses, it would get really ugly, but if you are a dedicated Randroid, you consult the usual suspects, and create the illusion that there is no “there” there.
Light Posting for the Next Few Days
Between frantic (as if there is any other kind) cleaning for Passover, and a long(ish) form piece that I am working on, my posting volume may be off for a while.
Why Does the Media Not Doing Even the Most Basic Due Diligence?
So, the news media is reporting how the Occupy movement is starting a super PAC.
Yeah, bull sh%$. It turns out that in the space of a few minutes, with the aid of Google you can find that the person behind it is a fanatic Ron Paul supporter with a history of severe mental illness:
Last week, several news organizations carried a story about an alleged Occupy PAC that, if true, would have driven another stake of political cynicism in the heart of the fractured movement, built on idealism and opposition to the corruption of American politics.
Paperwork for the PAC was filed with the FEC by 32-year-old John Paul Thornton of Decatur, Alabama, who says he was inspired by Stephen Colbert’s SuperPAC. Mother Jones reported that “[u]nlike Colbert’s Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, though, Thornton says in his first interview on the subject that OWS PAC is no joke.” Meanwhile, The Atlantic Wire wrote that the organization was specifically registered as a “SuperPAC” that could raise unlimited amounts of funds that Thornton intended to funnel to “federal candidates pledging to get money out of politics, including Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.”
There’s only one problem: The alleged “Occupy PAC” story isn’t at all what it seems, and had any of the reporters who first “broke” it last week bothered applying a little professional skepticism, the story never would have got off the ground, and never would have created yet another layer of disillusionment and cynicism that Occupy’s enemies have been actively sowing.
There many obvious warning signs about Thornton on the public record. For example, John Thornton admitted to a reporter from Capital New York that he was a Ron Paul supporter. You don’t have to be a veteran journalist to know that a guy who supports a far-right Republican libertarian who wants to abolish financial regulations and laws protecting labor and the environment, and favors Citizens United and unregulated lobbying, isn’t exactly representative of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Being a Ron Paul supporter in Occupy is one thing; it’s another thing altogether when a libertarian sets up a SuperPAC in Occupy’s name.
………
According to newspaper accounts, Thornton lost his defense-contracting job in the summer of 2008, after a violent psychotic episode landed him a criminal conviction and a nearly two-month jail sentence. His parents said that Thornton, who was 28 at the time, started losing his mind after getting out of the National Guard. And after string of run-ins with law, which included the violation of a protection order filed by his ex-wife, a judge sentenced him to 60 days in the tank.
The kicker here is that Breitbart actually scooped the reporters on the fact that this guy is a Paulite nut job, because it makes good copy for him, and it syncs with his goal of sliming the Occupy movement.
The more conspiratorially minded of you might think that this is something from the corporate task-master, but the reporter who broke this was Andy Kroll of Mother Jones, and while Mother Jones may be a number of things (after all, they fired Michael Moore, and had to settle out of court for wrongful termination),. they are not a corporate mouthpiece.
This just a lazy sloppy reporters who saw a story with some pop to it, and decided that it was easier to write the story without doing any leg work.
Unfortunately, this is the rule, rather than the exception.
Being Unwilling to Train Employees is Not a Skilled Worker Shortage
What Ryan Chittum says:
What’s going on here? The Post writes that the laid-off workers don’t know how to operate newfangled machinery and that Baby Boomers are retiring but younger generations “have avoided the manufacturing sector because of the volatility and stigma of factory work, as well as perceptions that U.S. manufacturing is a ‘dying industry.’”
I have another way to put that: These young folks don’t want to spend a lot of money and time training to do a specific job they might not get only to get laid off when some private-equity slicks (where the real money’s at) buy out the company and ship the jobs to China.
That’s what happens when owners and management have shredded the social contract. They find workers can’t or won’t do what they need them to. A flexible workforce has its downsides too.
This entire spate of stories about employers being unable to find qualified workers is crap.
What they really mean is that they cannot find people who need no training and are willing to work at slave wages, but that does not sell papers.
Wanker of the Day
John Corrigan, who thinks that people deserve to have their home stolen by the banks:
That can lead to confusion over who had the legal right to process the foreclosure. But it doesn’t mean the foreclosure itself was unwarranted.
So, foreclosing on someone who doesn’t have a mortgage, or for a mortgage that doesn’t belong to you, or illegally evading billions in title fees, or defrauding investors in mortgage backed securities is all OK, because you are robbing bad people.
H/t Atrios.
Obamacare Just Gets Better and Better
As part of health care reform, consumers are supposed to be getting clear and simple summary of benefits and of an insurance policy.
This means things like deductibles, maximum out of pocket, and co-payments are supposed to be presented to the consumer in a simple and readable format.
The rather unsurprising development in all this is that Obama administration caved to insurers on the most important number of all, and there is no requirement for insurers and employers to tell people what they have to pay in premiums:
The Department of Health and Human Services recently announced that health insurers and employers must provide more information to consumers shopping for health insurance. The ensuing coverage, shall we say, was a classic case of journalistic bungling. Reporters took what HHS officials fed them and crafted their pieces for public consumption. But the stories were confusing—in some cases flat-out wrong—and did not exactly offer the clearest of explanations about what’s supposed to be a clearer process for buying health coverage. I’d wager the public didn’t understand much of what the media dished out, and probably won’t until they actually start shopping for coverage again in the fall and find the government hasn’t made it easier after all.
…………
The report that HHS released to the media discloses some important numbers: the amount of the deductible; what services don’t count toward satisfying it; what’s not included in the out-of-pocket limits, like premiums and charges from doctors who balance the bill; the copays; and, probably most important, the amount of coinsurance—the percentage of a bill patients must pay, which is increasing with each passing year.
But insurers and employers do not have to tell consumers how much a policy costs—in other words, no premium information has to be given. Yep, that’s right—the key piece of information needed to make a good decision is missing. When insurers design a policy, they consider the interplay of coinsurance, copays, deductibles, coverage, and, of course, the premium, which lets them know what price point will make a consumer say “yes.” Price is the bottom line for consumers, but it’s poison for sellers, who fear a shopper might choose a policy with a lower price, other things being equal. So much for that price competition that was to solve all the ills of U.S. health care.
This was followed up by the media almost entirely simply reprinting the HHS press releases, which means that this crucial omission was largely ignored:
What was needed from the media was analysis and sharp questioning about what these new disclosures would really mean for consumers in terms of ease of use and availability during the shopping process. We know consumers hate shopping for insurance, and take shortcuts to finish the task as fast as they can. But instead of helping them through this dreaded chore, the media gave the Department of Health and Human Services a free pass.
This is not a product of a biased media, this is a product of lazy media, which is the real problem with the media, particularly given the financial pressures present in today’s media environment, because a lazy media is a cheaper media.
Do Not Piss Jon Off
Liz Trotta at Fox said that female soldiers getting raped have it coming to them.
Jon Stewart begs to differ.
It’s subtle, but this is the first time that I’ve ever seen him truly enraged.
It’s Official, We Have a 2nd Tech Bubble in 15 Years
How do I know this? I know this because Paul R. La Monica says that we are not in one.
When he says, “If you want to declare that tech stocks are once again a bubble … you’d be dead wrong,” any sane person would start shorting tech.
This is a guy who called short sales the next bubble, and used a song about masturbation to suggest that it was time to reenter the market. (My posts about him can be found at this link.)
In the world of investing advice, it’s hard to find someone who gets it right even half the time, but there lots of people, like Paul, who can be counted on to function reliably as a reverse barometer.
I’m just sayin’.
Marketplace Gets It Wrong
I was listening to marketplace, and they noted the good news that incomes rose in December rose at the fastest rate in months, and that people saved more too.
They said that this is good, but what it really means is that consumer spending fell in December:
U.S. consumer spending was flat in December as households put the largest rise in income in nine months into their savings, potentially signaling slower consumption early in 2012.
It was the weakest reading on spending since June, the Commerce Department said on Monday, and it followed two tepid gains in October and November.
Still, economists were cautiously optimistic that rising wages as labor markets improve will keep demand supported.
“I do believe there is some underlying trend that gives us some reason to feel a little bit better about what lies ahead regarding spending, and the main reason is the labor market,” said Anthony Karydakis, chief economist at Commerzbank in New York.
U.S. economic growth quickened in the fourth quarter and hiring picked up, but activity is expected to soften early this year. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said last week that the central bank was considering a further easing of monetary policy to support growth.
Reuters gets it. This is not good news.
This is deleveraging in a depressed economy.
Since When Were Swiss Bank Acounts Acceptable?
On NPR this morning, one of their bankster apologists was noting that Romney closed his Swiss bank account because recent US crack-downs on tax evaders using these accounts made them politically suspect.
What fairy tale land have these folks been living in?
I’m 49 years old, and for as long as I can remember, “Swiss Bank Account” has been synonymous with tax evasion and concealing the proceeds of illegal activities.
My conclusion is that these guys must have the political and financial acumen of Little Orphan Annie.
Wanker of the Day
Actually, the week, and likely the month, and possibly the whole year, is the so-called “fact checkers” at Politifact.
Basically, they declared that statements that the Paul Ryan “destroy Medicare” plan did in fact destroy Medicare was the “lie of the year.”
I get it: Reality has a well-known liberal bias, but when you are replacing a single payer health insurance system with vouchers that won’t cover private insurance, you are destroying Medicare:
This is simply indefensible. Claims that are factually true shouldn’t be eligible for a Lie of the Year designation.It’s unnerving that we have to explain this again, but since PolitiFact appears to be struggling with the relevant details, let’s set the record straight.
Medicare is a single-payer health care system offering guaranteed benefits to seniors. The House Republican budget plan intended to privatize the existing system and replace it with something very different — a voucher scheme. It would still be called “Medicare,” but it wouldn’t be Medicare.
It seems foolish to have to parse the meaning of the word “end,” but if there’s a program, and it’s replaced with a different program, proponents brought an end to the original program. That’s what the verb means.
(emphasis original)
It’s very simple: If you eliminate a program, even if you come up with something completely different that you give the same name, you’ve eliminated that program.
Furthermore, if you want to take 10+ years to phase it, you’ve eliminated that program.
I’m in complete agreement with Krugthulhu:
The answer is, of course, obvious: the people at Politifact are terrified of being considered partisan if they acknowledge the clear fact that there’s a lot more lying on one side of the political divide than on the other. So they’ve bent over backwards to appear “balanced” — and in the process made themselves useless and irrelevant.
And not only do they go with complete bullsh$%, but they overruled their own polling (even after a ‘Phant congressman attempted to encourage astroturfing, it still came in 3rd) to declare the truth to be a lie, so they doubled down.
Needless to day, Politifact won’t get links from me.
There are too many bastions of truthiness out there.
Our Liberal Media (#wordingfail)
The following image has been floating around Twitter (hash tag #wordingfail). I added the emphasis.
It appears that CNN thinks that any accusations of sexual impropriety against a Republican is “false”.
I’m not sure how much is the increased corporate ownership/consolidation and how much of this is 40+ years of the ‘Phants playing the ref.
FWIW, the this time, it’s not just an allegation of sexual harassment, it’s an allegation of a 13 year long affair that ended a few months before he entered the Presidential race, and she has records of repeated cell phone calls and text messages.
Jon Stewart is rejoicing.
Don’t Let the Door Hit Your Ass On the Way Out
Golf clap on your way out!
Bill O’Reilly is mad about potential tax increases, and he’s threatening to go Gault, and quit his job at Fox News.
Hell if higher taxes can make him shut the f%$# up, raise my taxes too.
It’s money well spent.