Sunday, August 28, 2011
Have we forgotten Horace Mann?
Joe Six-pack probably couldn't tell you about Horace Mann, but a teacher could. A recent NY Times editorial points out that: "Public education was built on the philosophy articulated by Horace Mann, the Massachusetts reformer who pioneered the Common School: a system “one and the same for both rich and poor” with “all citizens on the same footing of equality before the law of land.”
How's that working out these days? Turns out, not so well.
The Times gives some examples:
"Many schools that have already reduced hours, increased class sizes and eliminated electives are also now charging fees for workbooks, use of lab equipment and other basic instructional materials; extracurricular activities long considered essential are now available only to students who can afford them."
"In Medina, Ohio, The Wall Street Journal reported, it now costs $660 for a child to play on a high school sports team, $200 to join the concert choir and $50 to act in the school play. High school students in Overland Park, Kan., pay a $120 “activity programming fee” and a $100 “learning resources fee.” In Naperville, Ill., they are charged textbook and workbook fees, even for basic requirements like English and French, according to The Chicago Tribune."
Have you heard that the January Regents exams have been saved from cancellation for the coming school year? Did you know that it is because NYC mayor Bloomberg and 5 other wealthy folks raised $1.5 million to pay for them? Next year, maybe we'll just have a bake sale.
"Most state constitutions, in fact, guarantee all students a sound, basic public education. These constitutional rights cannot be put on hold, even in tough times. It is unconstitutional to call on parents to pay for textbooks and lab fees for required courses. And art, music, sports, basic educational support services and many extracurricular activities that promote learning, creativity and character are not luxuries; they, too, are essential features of a sound, basic education."
The Times concludes: "It is disgraceful that essential components of our public education system now depend on the charitable impulses of wealthy citizens."
Friday, August 26, 2011
Things have gotten better.
I remember summers in Rochester, NY, when I was growing up. They were different from the summers my children and grandchildren have experienced.
As the summer advanced parents began to keep a closer eye on their kids. Not because of any fear they might be molested. It was a virus that terrified both kids and parents.
Everybody knew the symptoms of polio. Kids and parents were scared of permanent braces or life in an iron lung. Public swimming pools closed during the "polio season."
Well, no longer. Things have gotten better.
When I was younger, one used to hear the term "exploratory surgery" quite often. Today, we ask patients to lie down and slide into a hollow tube for a CAT scan. Things have gotten better.
When I was teaching physics, I often used medical imaging as an example when some politician raged against a seemingly silly research project.
"It's doubtful," I would say, "that if you were in charge of funding medical research, you would chose to spend taxpayer money researching the results of slamming high-speed electrons into pieces of metal, but that research produced X-rays and began the march of non-invasive medical imaging."
Today, I'm thinking about the people of Galveston, Texas. When they went to bed on the evening of September 7, 1900, they had no idea that more than 8,000 of them would die the next day in a hurricane that would become the greatest natural disaster ever to hit the USA.
They had absolutely no idea it was coming.
As I write this, we know that a hurricane of possibly historic proportions is moving up the east coast. We watch it on radar on the nightly news. We see it from space on the Weather Channel. Reasonably reliable computer models tell us where it's headed.
I have people I care about in the path of this storm. You probably do too. Unlike the people of Galveston our loved ones have plenty of warning. They have the time to protect both life and property.
Things have gotten better.
As the summer advanced parents began to keep a closer eye on their kids. Not because of any fear they might be molested. It was a virus that terrified both kids and parents.
Everybody knew the symptoms of polio. Kids and parents were scared of permanent braces or life in an iron lung. Public swimming pools closed during the "polio season."
Well, no longer. Things have gotten better.
When I was younger, one used to hear the term "exploratory surgery" quite often. Today, we ask patients to lie down and slide into a hollow tube for a CAT scan. Things have gotten better.
When I was teaching physics, I often used medical imaging as an example when some politician raged against a seemingly silly research project.
"It's doubtful," I would say, "that if you were in charge of funding medical research, you would chose to spend taxpayer money researching the results of slamming high-speed electrons into pieces of metal, but that research produced X-rays and began the march of non-invasive medical imaging."
Today, I'm thinking about the people of Galveston, Texas. When they went to bed on the evening of September 7, 1900, they had no idea that more than 8,000 of them would die the next day in a hurricane that would become the greatest natural disaster ever to hit the USA.
They had absolutely no idea it was coming.
As I write this, we know that a hurricane of possibly historic proportions is moving up the east coast. We watch it on radar on the nightly news. We see it from space on the Weather Channel. Reasonably reliable computer models tell us where it's headed.
I have people I care about in the path of this storm. You probably do too. Unlike the people of Galveston our loved ones have plenty of warning. They have the time to protect both life and property.
Things have gotten better.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
And then they came for the ultimate public employee.
First they got rid of the "antiquated" notion of defined-benefit pensions in the private sector. Public employees at all levels are well on their way to the glories of defined-contribution (401(k)-type) retirement plans. The last target standing seems to be the military.
In the military, half-pay retirement is available to those who survive 20 years. Your retirement pay begins as soon as you retire, not years later at age 65.
When volunteering for military service can mean multiple deployments in locations where the temperature can reach 125-degrees, all while carrying 80 pounds of gear and body armor--not to mention being shot at--retirement pay is a good incentive to sign up for service.
That may be about to change. According to a Washington Post column by Andrew Bacevich, prof. of history and international studies at Boston Univ. and a former army officer:
"The Defense Business Board (motto: “Business Excellence in Defense of the Nation”), a panel of corporate types who advise the Pentagon’s civilian leadership, has trained its sights on a problem that urgently needs fixing: the military retirement system."
"Didn’t know it was broken? Well, a recent DBB study concludes that military benefits are “more generous and expensive” than those available in the private sector, and have therefore become “unaffordable” and “unfair.” Created back when military skills did not easily translate into civilian second careers, the system is also unnecessary, the study argues. And with retirees no longer dying as quickly as they once did, it’s inconvenient to boot."
One hardly knows where to begin. Military retirement benefits are "unfair" because they're better than those in the private sector? Let's just mention a couple of possibilities as to why this might not be true. First, while assembly line work at GM is often tedious, there have been precious few reports of GM workers being killed on the job by either sniper fire or exploding IEDs.
Second, military personnel often find private sector contractors doing jobs that used to be done by the military (e.g. guarding U.S. embassies), often at pay rates that are at least triple that of the soldier or marine that the contractor replaced.
As far as "translating into civilian second careers," has anyone noticed that returning veterans are at the top of the list of groups having difficulty finding work in today's economy?
According to Bacevich: "...the DBB wants the Pentagon to jettison the concept of a lifelong retirement pension. In its place, the board would institute a tax-sheltered savings account to accompany service members into the post-military workplace. Counting on civilian employers to contribute to that account, while stipulating that benefits would be “payable at age 60 to 65” rather than at 40 or 45, would reduce the money that the Pentagon is obliged to set aside. In effect, providing for Capt. Smith’s retirement would become an individual responsibility, shared by however many employers Smith could induce to pitch in — not a responsibility that the Pentagon alone would have to bear. Less money added to retirement accounts would mean more money for the stuff that matters: wars and weapons."
Or, maybe we could just fight a few less useless wars, and use the savings to treat those who had to fight the necessary wars in a decent fashion. Just a thought.
In the military, half-pay retirement is available to those who survive 20 years. Your retirement pay begins as soon as you retire, not years later at age 65.
When volunteering for military service can mean multiple deployments in locations where the temperature can reach 125-degrees, all while carrying 80 pounds of gear and body armor--not to mention being shot at--retirement pay is a good incentive to sign up for service.
That may be about to change. According to a Washington Post column by Andrew Bacevich, prof. of history and international studies at Boston Univ. and a former army officer:
"The Defense Business Board (motto: “Business Excellence in Defense of the Nation”), a panel of corporate types who advise the Pentagon’s civilian leadership, has trained its sights on a problem that urgently needs fixing: the military retirement system."
"Didn’t know it was broken? Well, a recent DBB study concludes that military benefits are “more generous and expensive” than those available in the private sector, and have therefore become “unaffordable” and “unfair.” Created back when military skills did not easily translate into civilian second careers, the system is also unnecessary, the study argues. And with retirees no longer dying as quickly as they once did, it’s inconvenient to boot."
One hardly knows where to begin. Military retirement benefits are "unfair" because they're better than those in the private sector? Let's just mention a couple of possibilities as to why this might not be true. First, while assembly line work at GM is often tedious, there have been precious few reports of GM workers being killed on the job by either sniper fire or exploding IEDs.
Second, military personnel often find private sector contractors doing jobs that used to be done by the military (e.g. guarding U.S. embassies), often at pay rates that are at least triple that of the soldier or marine that the contractor replaced.
As far as "translating into civilian second careers," has anyone noticed that returning veterans are at the top of the list of groups having difficulty finding work in today's economy?
According to Bacevich: "...the DBB wants the Pentagon to jettison the concept of a lifelong retirement pension. In its place, the board would institute a tax-sheltered savings account to accompany service members into the post-military workplace. Counting on civilian employers to contribute to that account, while stipulating that benefits would be “payable at age 60 to 65” rather than at 40 or 45, would reduce the money that the Pentagon is obliged to set aside. In effect, providing for Capt. Smith’s retirement would become an individual responsibility, shared by however many employers Smith could induce to pitch in — not a responsibility that the Pentagon alone would have to bear. Less money added to retirement accounts would mean more money for the stuff that matters: wars and weapons."
Or, maybe we could just fight a few less useless wars, and use the savings to treat those who had to fight the necessary wars in a decent fashion. Just a thought.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Who's paying no taxes?
With a nod toward Jeff Foxworthy and his "you might be a redneck" series: If you can say something true in a way that makes your listeners reach a conclusion that isn't, you might be a politician!
One last example, and this one's just a bit easier than the last post. This was said by Rick Perry on August 13, but he's only the latest to make the same observation:
“We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.”
Part 2:
One last example, and this one's just a bit easier than the last post. This was said by Rick Perry on August 13, but he's only the latest to make the same observation:
“We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.”
In her Aug. 15 column at the Washington Post, Ruth Marcus observes:
"Perry’s statement conjures visions of America as Slacker Nation, where the overburdened wagon-pullers drag an increasingly heavy burden of freeloaders. His number is correct but, like other conservatives who have seized on the statistic, Perry draws from it a dangerously misleading lesson."
Marcus refers to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center to explain that our progressive income tax system is "designed to help the working poor and low-income seniors." The Center points out that a couple with two children is entitled to the same standard deduction ($11,600) and personal exemptions ($3,700) as anyone else. If that couple's income is less than $26,400 they have zero income for tax purposes.
Marcus says: "Does Perry truly see this as an “injustice”? Does he believe his “dismay” should be alleviated by raising the tax burden on these households?"
"In addition, the notion that these households pay no taxes is flat-out wrong. They pay — leaving aside state and local sales, income and property taxes — federal gasoline and other excise taxes and, most significantly, payroll taxes on every dollar they earn. These taxes are regressive. Everyone pays the same share, regardless of income, so they hit the poor hardest, and they counterbalance the progressivity of the income tax code."
Marcus goes on to point out that only 18% of households pay neither income or payroll taxes. Of these, 10% are elderly and 7% earn less than $20,000 per year.
She says: "Assuming that Perry isn’t worked up about Slacker Grandmas, the relevant “slacker share” — people who are supposedly comfortably ensconced on that wagon the rest of us are pulling — is in single digits rather than “nearly half.”
When one looks at the totality of all taxes paid, the picture is a little different.
" Examining the total tax burden — state, federal and local — Citizens for Tax Justice calculated that the top 1 percent of households (average income, $1.3 million) earned 20.3 percent of income and paid 21.5 percent of taxes in 2010."
Marcus concludes: "The tax code is studded with a costly bevy of deductions and preferences — mortgage interest, employer-sponsored health insurance, retirement savings — that benefit wealthier taxpayers over those with modest incomes. If Perry wants to go after injustice in the tax code, he’ll find ample targets. Failing to tax poor people enough isn’t among them."
BONUS:
On last Thursday's Daily Show, Jon Stewart addressed this issue and "nailed it" as only he can do. Here is that segment, which is split into two parts:
Part 1:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| World of Class Warfare - Warren Buffett vs. Wealthy Conservatives | ||||
| ||||
Part 2:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over | ||||
| ||||
Monday, August 22, 2011
Fact right, conclusion wrong.
Yesterday we looked at the age-old art of "just makin' stuff up." It's everywhere.
Remember the U.S. Senator who made a speech on the Senate floor in which he claimed that abortions were 90+% of what Planned Parenthood did? Then his office had to issue a statement saying that the Senator's speech "was not meant to be factually accurate."
Sometimes people say something that is 100% factually accurate, but they say it in a way that leads the reader/listener to a totally wrong conclusion. Rep. Michelle Bachmann made such a statement on Aug. 14, and on the Sunday morning talk shows later that week. Even being forewarned that there's a "trap" in this statement, it's hard to find. See if you can pick it out.
"Well, I think the one thing we have to do is reject the new normal level of spending under the Obama administration, because President Obama amped up spending to never-seen-before levels. . . . I mean, one example I'll give you is, we had one employee at the federal Department of Transportation that made $170,000 a year at the beginning of the recession. We had the trillion-dollar stimulus, and 18 months into the recession, we had 1,690 employees making over $170,000. Government has really been growing at — a lot of largesse, but the people in the real world aren’t. And that’s what has to change. Government has no conformity at all with the real world."
Remember the U.S. Senator who made a speech on the Senate floor in which he claimed that abortions were 90+% of what Planned Parenthood did? Then his office had to issue a statement saying that the Senator's speech "was not meant to be factually accurate."
Sometimes people say something that is 100% factually accurate, but they say it in a way that leads the reader/listener to a totally wrong conclusion. Rep. Michelle Bachmann made such a statement on Aug. 14, and on the Sunday morning talk shows later that week. Even being forewarned that there's a "trap" in this statement, it's hard to find. See if you can pick it out.
"Well, I think the one thing we have to do is reject the new normal level of spending under the Obama administration, because President Obama amped up spending to never-seen-before levels. . . . I mean, one example I'll give you is, we had one employee at the federal Department of Transportation that made $170,000 a year at the beginning of the recession. We had the trillion-dollar stimulus, and 18 months into the recession, we had 1,690 employees making over $170,000. Government has really been growing at — a lot of largesse, but the people in the real world aren’t. And that’s what has to change. Government has no conformity at all with the real world."
Glen Kessler, who writes the "Fact Checker" column for the Washington Post, received several emails from readers wondering about the accuracy of this statement. Here's what he had to say:
"On the surface, the fact appears astonishing — a huge increase in big-paying government jobs under Obama. But this is one of those statements one has to unpack very carefully, because Bachmann uses what is essentially a correct statistic regarding government salaries in a very misleading way. "
"Note that although the GOP presidential aspirant starts out by talking about the “never-seen-before levels” of spending under Obama and then mentions “the trillion-dollar stimulus,” the example she cites — the number of Transportation Department employees making more than $170,000 — uses the metric of “the beginning of the recession.” There’s a reason for that phrase: The recession started in December 2007, 13 months before Obama became president."
"In other words, Bachmann gives the impression that she is talking about something that Obama did, but in fact, the big increase in government pay that she denounces started under Obama’s Republican predecessor, George W. Bush."
"Bachmann’s use of the phrase “beginning of the recession” suggests she knows full well that the pay raises did not occur under Obama, and yet she persists in leaving the impression that Obama is directly responsible for boosting the number of employees making more than $170,000."
"That makes her statistic, while technically correct, deliberately misleading, especially since Obama has actually frozen federal salaries."
You can read Kessler's complete column at this link:
Tomorrow, we'll do one more factually misleading statement. This one involves taxes. Then we'll leave the area of fact abuse and move onto other items of interest to retirees.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Not true? What the hell, say it anyway!
Let's begin our look into how facts can be abused with the most straightforward case: simply ignoring them.
The 2012 campaign seems to be in full swing and, when looking for examples of the abuse of facts, politicians are such low-hanging fruit.
A while ago, I told you that this blog was going to stay away from national politics--except where it applied to retired teachers. That's still my intent. I'm not going to advocate for any political party or candidate. I know some of you are more conservative, and I respect that.
Having said that, I intend to use some of the current Republican presidential candidates as examples of fact abuse. Why? Because they're in the news, and you may recognize the statements they made and your reaction to these statements. You may find yourself saying, "Hey, I fell right into that trap."
Don't Democrats ever abuse the facts? Of course they do! I'm sure you could find President Obama using each of the techniques I'll point out. The current crop of Republicans, however, are relative "newbies"--with a couple of exceptions-- and don't do nearly as well at hiding their abuse of facts as old hands on the national stage.
Still, if you feel the need, please feel free to point out instances in which Democrats apply the same technique. Send it as a comment, and it will be posted.
Let's begin with a claim the governor of Texas made before he even got into the race. Here's what Kurt Anderson had to say in a recent NY Times column:
"Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. Perry is even entitled to his opinion that states such as Texas might want to secede, as he threatened at a Tea Party rally two years ago. But he’s not entitled to his own facts. “When we came into the nation in 1845,” he’d earlier told some bloggers visiting his office, “we were a republic. We were a stand-alone nation. And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.” That special opt-out provision is entirely fiction, a Texas myth the governor of Texas apparently thinks is real."
"During his debut in Iowa Sunday night in Waterloo, then again on Monday at the Iowa State Fair Monday, Gov. Perry brought up [a] phantom “obscene, crazy” regulation in Texan terms."
“If you’re a tractor driver, if you drive your tractor across a public road, you’re gonna have to have a commercial driver’s license. Now how idiotic is that?” he thundered to the fair crowd in Des Moines, with the rejoinder, “What were they thinkin’?”
"For a small-government conservative on the presidential campaign stump like Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a new federal regulation forcing farmers to get commercial drivers licenses would make a perfect example of Barack Obama’s Washington run amok."
The 2012 campaign seems to be in full swing and, when looking for examples of the abuse of facts, politicians are such low-hanging fruit.
A while ago, I told you that this blog was going to stay away from national politics--except where it applied to retired teachers. That's still my intent. I'm not going to advocate for any political party or candidate. I know some of you are more conservative, and I respect that.
Having said that, I intend to use some of the current Republican presidential candidates as examples of fact abuse. Why? Because they're in the news, and you may recognize the statements they made and your reaction to these statements. You may find yourself saying, "Hey, I fell right into that trap."
Don't Democrats ever abuse the facts? Of course they do! I'm sure you could find President Obama using each of the techniques I'll point out. The current crop of Republicans, however, are relative "newbies"--with a couple of exceptions-- and don't do nearly as well at hiding their abuse of facts as old hands on the national stage.
Still, if you feel the need, please feel free to point out instances in which Democrats apply the same technique. Send it as a comment, and it will be posted.
Let's begin with a claim the governor of Texas made before he even got into the race. Here's what Kurt Anderson had to say in a recent NY Times column:
"Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. Perry is even entitled to his opinion that states such as Texas might want to secede, as he threatened at a Tea Party rally two years ago. But he’s not entitled to his own facts. “When we came into the nation in 1845,” he’d earlier told some bloggers visiting his office, “we were a republic. We were a stand-alone nation. And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.” That special opt-out provision is entirely fiction, a Texas myth the governor of Texas apparently thinks is real."
See the trap here? Perry is talking about Texas. He's not just any Texan, he's the governor of Texas. When he says something about Texas, you assume he knows what he's talking about! Did you fall into the trap? I did, until I took the time to check it out on my own.
Still, let's give the man the late Texas political humorist Mollie Ivins called "Gov. Goodhair" a pass on this one. Apparently lots of Texans believe this myth.
Here's a more recent example, as covered by Jonathan Weisman of the "Washington Wire" blog of the Wall Street Journal:
“If you’re a tractor driver, if you drive your tractor across a public road, you’re gonna have to have a commercial driver’s license. Now how idiotic is that?” he thundered to the fair crowd in Des Moines, with the rejoinder, “What were they thinkin’?”
"But there is no such regulation" [Emphasis mine.]
Oops. There goes that trap again. His audience assumed he knew what he was talking about.
There had been rumors of such a regulation spreading through the farm community--as there were rumors that the government was about to confiscate guns and ammunition soon after the Obama victory.
Even though the government had issued a statement saying "The common sense exemptions that allow farmers, their employers, and their families to accomplish their day-to-day work and transport their products to market” should remain in place. We have no intention of instituting onerous regulations on the hardworking families who feed our country and fuel our economy," Perry went for it anyway.
And why not. Even though his opponents would be filtering every word looking for ways to trip him up, it was a good line for the farmers, who probably wouldn't see him get caught by the Wall Street Journal anyway.
Up next: Leading the reader/listener to a false conclusion by saying something absolutely true..
Friday, August 19, 2011
Just the facts, ma'am.
I love facts. They're the things that make it possible to find solutions to our problems.
I often tell my conservative friends that I'm certain that if we got a group of 10 of their like-minded friends together with a group of 10 of my like-minded friends, we could solve whatever problem we wished to work on.
Why? Because we would actually want to solve the problem, not keep controversy alive to boost our ratings or look toward triumph in the next election.
No matter what the problem, the first item of business, after identifying the problem to be solved, would be to collect the pertinent facts. No facts to work from, no solution possible. Facts are that important.
It seems that facts are in a bit of difficulty these days. First of all, they're harder to come by in our daily reading.
I just began reading a book titled "Blur: How to know what's true in the age of information overload." It's by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, who are also the authors of "The Elements of Journalism."
We all know that newspapers and magazines are having a hard time staying alive in this digital age, but this quote from the opening of the book caught me by surprise: "The numbers are shocking. In the initial ten years of the twenty-first century, newspapers saw nearly half of their ad revenue disappear, Roughly a third of all newsroom jobs vanished. The audience and revenue for network news were less than half what they had been twenty years earlier. More than two billion dollars in news gathering [ability] annually disappeared."
Remember TV series like "Lou Grant" or movies like "All the President's Men?" Newspapers made exciting drama because they had the resources to speak truth to power, and to uncover when power was screwing with the rest of us. The editor was always asking the reporter: "Do you have two sources for that? You do? Then print it!"
Newspapers and magazines had editors and fact-checkers. I know from experience that when a writer submitted an article to a national magazine, it was assigned to a fact-checker who verified every single fact from the article.
Then came the internet, devoid of editors and fact-checkers. "The most fundamental change," say Kovach & Rosenstiel, "is that more of the responsibility for knowing what is true and what is not now rests with each of us as individuals."
It's a "reader beware" situation with facts today. They can be used--and abused--in some rather clever ways.
Remember the argument in Wisconsin about the pay and benefits of teachers and other public employees? "Everybody knew" that teachers were better off than workers in the private sector.
How did they know this? Because the average pay of public employees was higher than the average wage for a worker in the private sector. That is a fact, so case closed. No need to investigate further. Pay no attention to the additional facts behind that curtain!
You see, if one recognizes that the public workforce is made up of a lot of highly educated people such as teachers, engineers, nurses, doctors, etc. and compares the pay and benefits of comparably-educated members of the public and private workforces, an entirely different fact emerges. Taking into account both pay and benefits, public employees in Wisconsin earn less than their private counterparts with equal educational levels. For specifics, see the following blog post:
http://rsteinfeldt.blogspot.com/2011/06/public-pay-vs-private-truth-is-in.html
Facts are so complicated. That's why I would like to give you a few examples of how facts can be misused in the next couple of posts.
I often tell my conservative friends that I'm certain that if we got a group of 10 of their like-minded friends together with a group of 10 of my like-minded friends, we could solve whatever problem we wished to work on.
Why? Because we would actually want to solve the problem, not keep controversy alive to boost our ratings or look toward triumph in the next election.
No matter what the problem, the first item of business, after identifying the problem to be solved, would be to collect the pertinent facts. No facts to work from, no solution possible. Facts are that important.
It seems that facts are in a bit of difficulty these days. First of all, they're harder to come by in our daily reading.
I just began reading a book titled "Blur: How to know what's true in the age of information overload." It's by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, who are also the authors of "The Elements of Journalism."
We all know that newspapers and magazines are having a hard time staying alive in this digital age, but this quote from the opening of the book caught me by surprise: "The numbers are shocking. In the initial ten years of the twenty-first century, newspapers saw nearly half of their ad revenue disappear, Roughly a third of all newsroom jobs vanished. The audience and revenue for network news were less than half what they had been twenty years earlier. More than two billion dollars in news gathering [ability] annually disappeared."
Remember TV series like "Lou Grant" or movies like "All the President's Men?" Newspapers made exciting drama because they had the resources to speak truth to power, and to uncover when power was screwing with the rest of us. The editor was always asking the reporter: "Do you have two sources for that? You do? Then print it!"
Newspapers and magazines had editors and fact-checkers. I know from experience that when a writer submitted an article to a national magazine, it was assigned to a fact-checker who verified every single fact from the article.
Then came the internet, devoid of editors and fact-checkers. "The most fundamental change," say Kovach & Rosenstiel, "is that more of the responsibility for knowing what is true and what is not now rests with each of us as individuals."
It's a "reader beware" situation with facts today. They can be used--and abused--in some rather clever ways.
Remember the argument in Wisconsin about the pay and benefits of teachers and other public employees? "Everybody knew" that teachers were better off than workers in the private sector.
How did they know this? Because the average pay of public employees was higher than the average wage for a worker in the private sector. That is a fact, so case closed. No need to investigate further. Pay no attention to the additional facts behind that curtain!
You see, if one recognizes that the public workforce is made up of a lot of highly educated people such as teachers, engineers, nurses, doctors, etc. and compares the pay and benefits of comparably-educated members of the public and private workforces, an entirely different fact emerges. Taking into account both pay and benefits, public employees in Wisconsin earn less than their private counterparts with equal educational levels. For specifics, see the following blog post:
http://rsteinfeldt.blogspot.com/2011/06/public-pay-vs-private-truth-is-in.html
Facts are so complicated. That's why I would like to give you a few examples of how facts can be misused in the next couple of posts.
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