FAIR has a couple of great pieces on the way the media fails to cover issues that matter but instead provides profiles of people in the news. The mainstream media may be giving us entertainment news, or people profiles, but not information we can use so certainly not independent news. FAIR looks at the coverage of Paul Ryan's so-called "path to prosperity" budget proposal. (See earlier ataxingmatter entries regarding the path to mediocrity Ryan's proposals would put us on.)
1) Paul Ryan, Serious Numbers Geek (Aside from his Fuzzy Numbers), which takes on a discussion of Ryan's budget by Crowley and Newton-Small in Time magazine. Excerpts follow:
Michael Crowley and Jay Newton-Small tell us that Ryan is "the new face of federal frugality":
Just 41 years old, with jet black hair and a touch of Eagle Scout to him, the House Budget Committee chairman unveiled an ambitious package of huge budget cuts designed to dig the country out of its crippling debt crisis. For Ryan, reining in spending is nothing less than an act of patriotic valor.
Valor. Eagle Scout. Great hair!
Ryan's critics have noted that his plan actually does very little about the "crippling debt crisis." Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo reports that the Congressional Budget Office's score of the plan "finds that by the end of the 10-year budget window, public debt will actually be higher than it would be if the GOP just did nothing."
The Time reporters add:
...... Now a married father of three, Ryan is a PowerPoint fanatic with an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents. "I love the field of economics," Ryan says. "I have a knack for numbers. And I've just delved into this issue for my adult life, basically."
Deep into the piece, after these tributes to Ryan's wonkery, comes this parenthetical:
(He's also been criticized for peddling fuzzy math and rosy projections. A Washington Post factcheck deemed his budget full of "dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures.")
Huh. I thought he had "an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents"?
2) The Washington Post and Paul Ryan's Wonky Math, which takes on the April 6, 2011 article by David A. Fahrenthold in the Washington Post. Excerpts follow (first indent quotes the FAIR article; second indent are quotes from the WaPo article):
[The Fahrenthold article] leads with this:
This is the essential question for Rep. Paul Ryan: Can this man really manage the hardest sales job in U.S. politics?
That might be "essential" for him, but it's of little importance to us. We need to know what the plan actually wants to do. ......
So far, the sales pitch appears to be classic Ryan. He will make his case with earnestness and a hope that a quiet explanation of budget math can swing the country in a way that previous politicians could not
He's just trying to explain math! That's nice, since the Post article doesn't:
The vision also includes a change in the Medicare program, in which the federal government acts as a health insurer for seniors. In coming years--Ryan's plan does not apply to people who are already 55--he would shift the program so that seniors would choose a private health plan. The federal government would then provide "premium support" to help them pay for coverage.
The main math question is how much "support" seniors will get. The answer is not much, and certainly not enough to cover the skyrocketing cost of healthcare. Pointing this out should be part of every story--even ones that tell us that Paul Ryan's a "wonk."
Consider that the Supreme Court is rapidly extending its foolish "money = speech" holding to mean that there can be no restraints on the power of wealthy corporations and individuals to influence elections in their favor.
Add to that the fact that the media, owned in large part by corporate giants, fails to provide the kind of in-depth coverage and independent views of policy issues that are needed for the electorate to be informed.
And you have a recipe for turning our democracy into a realm of have and have-nots, in which the have-nots make up the vast majority of the population, but the oligarchs at the top have all the influence bought by their wealth.
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