The New York Times, the Old Grey Lady of journalism, is taking an increasing amount of flack about its editorial bias showing up on the front page.
The current flap has to do with a poll conducted by the Times and CBS. The Times had huge headlines about the results, claiming that Americans think Bush and Washington in general are too focused on Iraq and overseas affairs, and not enough on domestic problems.
Problem is, the poll says nothing of the sort.
Question Twenty-Nine. “In deciding how to spend their time, presidents have to weigh the importance of foreign policy problems and problems here at home. Given the importance of each, do you think George W. Bush has been spending too much time on foreign policy problems, OR too much time on problems here at home, OR has he been spending his time about right?”
According to the Times, which ran it as a five-column headline across the top of page A14 yesterday, the answer is clear: “Public Says Bush Needs to Pay More Heed to Economy, Less to Iraq.” Unfortunately, though, Actual Results Prove Times Account of Poll Dishonest. A majority of respondents (52 percent) told Times/CBS researchers they think the president is dividing his attention “about right” and another two percent complained that Bush spends too much time on domestic issues.
The Times doesn’t actually provide any of the numbers in their story, of course, just the results they claim. CBS, the co-sponsor, has the questions and data breakdown here.
(Or do they? The document linked to there now starts with question 27 — and question 29 is missing. How … odd.)
(via Volokh)
Okay, so it’s some silly reporting. But the poll itself is sillier. How is the public supposed to know details of the Prez’s time management? By reading heavily spun second- and third-hand accounts in the papers? While we’re at it, let’s poll about other things people can’t know. “The latest NYT-CBS poll shows that Americans believe 62 to 38% that that new astronomical object discovered beyond Pluto is a mere planetoid, not a planet, while they were split 53 to 47% over whether the sun will explode in six years as recently predicted by a Dutch crackpot posing as an astrophysicist.”
The Times bias that most recently shocked me was the ingenuous position of their Pulitzer-winning editorialist Thomas Friedman. When Terry Gross asked him about unstated reasons why the Bush Administration might want to invade Iraq, he answered “What you see is what you get.” As if that were ever all there is to foreign policy!
There’s always a tension between what High Officials know and what the public knows. On the one hand, we can’t assume we (the public) know everything. On the other hand, we cannot make informed decisions, in our democracy, if we aren’t informed. On the gripping hand, we simply cannot be informed about everything, since that means that everyone else is informed, too.
The fuzzy area is where we have others besides the President and his Administration who are supposedly told about Secret Stuff — the Senate Intelligence Committee, for example. When those Senators (or others who claim they are being informed) come out against — or in favor — of what the Pres wants, are they acting in good faith? Simply palying politics? Both, as the moment warrents?
We never know how much we don’t know. The question is, then, how much do we trust those who do know things we don’t?
Yeah, well, when we get somebody like Rumsfeld giving us information like: Osama bin Laden is either alive and well, or alive and not well, or not alive…
Thanks for the news flash, Mr. Secretary.
Allow me my thirty seconds of sympathy for the SecDef.
He gets asked about ObL. If he says, “He’s dead,” demands come as to how he knows, where is the body, what are his sources. If he says, “He’s alive,” ditto. If he says, “We don’t know,” he’s accused of defeat in the War on Terrorism. If he says, “Well, we think he probably is dead, but we’re not sure, we have conflicting information from different sources,” then he’s accused of evading the question, of prevarication, or just being confused.
Frankly, I wouldn’t want to get up in front of a Washington press conference.
On the other hand, he knew the job was dangerous when he took it.
Now that Friedman is editorializing about the real vs. stated reasons for the war, I tried to Google up the old Fresh Air in which he said they were the same. I found that the link I cited above is now broken. Here’s the current link to the 9/5/2002 Fresh Air interview.