On January 27, FAIR issued an action alert on the New York Times' and AP's use of the White House-friendly phrase "personal accounts" to describe Bush's privatization plan. On March 6, Times public editor Daniel Okrent devoted part of his column to responding to FAIR activists and others on this issue. FAIR replied in its online Media Views feature, a daily compendium of media criticism and analysis. Okrent's comment was: "Now a rugby scrum has gathered around the Bush Social Security plan. Republicans tout 'personal accounts'; Democrats trash 'private accounts.' In this atmosphere, I don't think reporters have much choice [...]
Mar
08
2005
CBS Offers Misleading Pro-Privatization Predictions
CBS Evening News has presented two segments in recent weeks (2/9/05, 3/4/05) that purport to show how typical American workers would fare under George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security. But the segments rely on stock market projections that, if true, would make any "crisis" in Social Security almost impossible. CBS reporter Jim Axelrod first profiled (2/9/05) Jama Whitesell, a 28-year-old receptionist making $32,000 a year. Axelrod went to a financial planner who predicted that a private account would be a safe bet for this worker-- based on a projected 8 percent return on the private account. Why did [...]
Feb
14
2005
USA Today Responds on Social Security Criticism
On February 7, FAIR issued an action alert criticizing USA Today's re-writing of George W. Bush's Social Security rhetoric. Bush has said a number of times that the system will be "flat bust," "exhausted" and "bankrupt" in the year 2042. In describing Bush's position, USA Today changed those misleading claims, reporting that Bush has said that Social Security "won't have enough money to pay promised benefits in 2042," and "Bush says that in 2042, it won't be able to pay 100 percent of guaranteed benefits." As FAIR argued, USA Today effectively changed Bush's inaccurate claims into more accurate-- though still [...]
Feb
07
2005
USA Today Covers for Bush's Social Security Distortion
NOTE: Please see the update to this alert. In its February 3 edition, USA Today not only failed to challenge a George W. Bush distortion about Social Security-- it actually changed Bush's remarks to make them more accurate. Summarizing Bush's case for privatizing the program, reporter Judy Keen explained: "Two days after winning re-election, Bush said his top priority would be Social Security, which he says will go into the red in 2018 and won't have enough money to pay promised benefits in 2042." And in a Q & A piece, the paper made the same claim: Answering the question, [...]
Jan
27
2005
Private Vs. Personal
Media's Social Security Semantics
[Read the Times's response to this Action Alert.] Facing significant opposition to its plan to privatize part of the Social Security program, the White House is pushing reporters and lawmakers to use the expression "personal accounts," since polling data seems to indicate that "privatization" is an unpopular term with voters. While it's not unusual for politicians to try to spin the terminology used in debate, journalists should avoid changing word usage simply because some politicians think it will be to their advantage. There's little doubt that "privatization" is a more accurate description of the White House plan, especially considering that [...]
Jan
21
2005
Mark Weisbrot on Social Security, Sheldon Rampton on Armstrong Williams
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Social Security is still the top domestic story, and we’ve talked about how distorted and ill-founded much of the reporting has been. But is coverage of the issue starting to improve? And does that have something to do with the political reality that the White House is likely to face in their effort to privatize the program? We'll ask Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic & Policy Research about the state of the Social Security debate. Also on the show: the revelation that conservative pundit Armstrong Williams had been paid by the White [...]
Jan
14
2005
ABC Muddles the Social Security Debate
Not "everyone agrees" with distorted claims
As the debate over Social Security privatization continues, so do the mainstream media distortions of the debate. On January 11, ABC News muddied the waters further with two one-sided and inaccurate reports. On World News Tonight, anchor Peter Jennings started off the distortions in the show's "A Closer Look" segment. Having allowed that there is "some argument" about whether Social Security would, as Bush argued recently, "go bankrupt" without congressional intervention, Jennings continued: "But there's no question that baby boomers will place great strain on Social Security as they retire. And by 2042, by some measures, the system may not [...]
Jan
12
2005
NBC Short on Social Security "Crisis" Critics
The debate over George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security seems to be heating up, and some media outlets are beginning to notice the flaws in the White House's argument that there is an imminent "crisis" in the decades-old government program. On the January 11 NBC Nightly News broadcast, anchor Brian Williams seemed to be addressing that issue, introducing a segment by noting that "critics say he's exaggerating the problem to sell his plan, while not yet talking about big cuts in future retiree benefits." But the report that followed included no such critics of the administration's "crisis" rhetoric. [...]
