Im-Politic: Trump’s Sure Not Draining the Mainstream Media Swamp

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Im-Politic, journalism, Maggie Haberman, Mainstream Media, media, Sean Spicer, The New York Times, Trump, Washington Post, White House Correspondents Association

At this early stage in the Trump administration, my biggest disappointment doesn’t concern the gaps of varying sizes between the president’s campaign rhetoric and policy moves. Sure, I’m concerned – though less (so far) about his decision to use cruise missile strikes to punish Syria’s dictator for alleged chemical weapons use in that country’s chaotic civil war than about his linkage of China trade ties with Beijing’s willingness to help rein in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Instead, my biggest disappointment concerns Mr. Trump’s dealings with the Mainstream Media.

For the president gave his supporters and the nation at large every reason to believe that he was going to take badly needed steps to reduce the bloated and increasingly harmful role played in American democracy lately by political reporters for America’s leading national news organizations and the failed bipartisan ruling class they tend to shill for. Yet three months into his administration, it looks like same-old-same-old — at least regarding the fundamentals — even though there’s no shortage of unusually sharp-edged exchanges between individual reporters and individual administration officials.

The president and his aides looked to be off to a strong start, as I reported in this post on the mold-breaking press conference he held just before his inauguration. Moreover, Press Secretary Sean Spicer has followed through on his stated intention to enable new news organizations and voices to take part in his daily White House press briefings, rather than defer to the arguably self-serving standards of the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA). Perhaps most stinging to the establishment press, in terms of discrete events, the entire administration decided to skip the WHCA’s increasingly narcissistic, celebrity-drenched, and off-putting annual dinner. On an ongoing basis, the president kept slighting the press several times per day with tweets that went over their heads and directly to his tens of millions of followers.

But at least to date, the administration has missed two opportunities genuinely to cut the Mainstream Media down to size and thereby introduce some desperately needed accountability into their cosseted world. The first has to do with the daily press briefings. Spicer clearly has been more combative at these events than his predecessors – for a time, the sessions were treated by networks as must-see TV.

As has become all too obvious, however, “combative” doesn’t necessarily mean “effective.” Indeed, Spicer’s numerous gaffes have made him an object of ridicule even among many outside national chattering class ranks. Yet what should be most upsetting about his performance – even for Americans who are not die-hard Trump-ers – is how plainly it shows the weakness of Spicer’s command of substantive issues and, at least as important, how slow he actually is on his rhetorical feet.

As a result, Spicer is conspicuously ill-equipped to carry out what should be one of the highest priority missions of Trump spokesman: using the press briefings to expose how politically partisan, childishly shallow, and downright ignorant so many Mainstream Media journalists and their breathlessly voiced questions tend to be.

The main purpose here wouldn’t be payback. The main purpose would be public education. Although the media’s poor trust and approval ratings indicate that few Americans still view them as reliable sources of information, the impact of daily broadcast humiliations can’t be overemphasized, especially given the matchless megaphone of social media. And because fostering the image of omniscience is obviously much more central to the Mainstream Media’s reputation (and profitability) than its by-now-shredded image of impartiality, a steady stream of comeuppances could well lead to the mass firings or demotions and infusion of new, untainted blood that the news business urgently needs.

The second media opportunity the Trump administration is missing has to do with access. Proximity to power is another key to the Mainstream Media’s disproportionate power (and pro-establishment bias). Love them or hate them, these journalists and the organizations they work for enjoy their still huge audiences largely because they can plausibly claim to be in the know. Because of the connections these correspondents and pundits have developed with America’s most important political leaders and other movers and shakers, they have nurtured the entirely credible impression that they’re privy to the real views of The Deciders and their advisers, and to the principal reasons (both genuine and those created for public consumption) behind their decisions. That is, following these news people was rightly seen as a good way to figure out both what American leaders were actually trying to do and why, and what these leaders wanted the public to think they were trying to do.

Unfortunately, as has been widely noted, the price for this access almost invariably has been independence that is all too easily compromised in far too many ways. Most obviously, a reporter who’s too difficult to manipulate, and/or too harshly critical, simply isn’t going to have the kind of contact with the figures that count the most as a reporter who eagerly plays this game.

More subtly, ongoing exposure to top leaders in government (and other spheres) tends to socialize journalists in innumerable ways that generate strong pro-establishment and status quo-oriented leanings. Understanding this process entails first and foremost understanding that journalists operate on the fringes of power. They lack the ability to shape events directly, but their choice of profession logically indicates a deeply felt interest in these events. Access to top leaders brings them tantalizingly close to this power – and to its biggest secrets (at least in theory).

Shrewd power-holders know how to capitalize on this journalistic weak spot by pretending to bring news people into their confidence, and on a regular basis actually doing so – usually in minor or superficial, but always self-serving, ways that at the same time can be dramatic and/or colorful enough to undergird an entire hard news story or feature. Sometimes, leaders also flatter journalists by asking for their counsel, and even acting as if it’s valued. After years of such treatment, it’s easy for a journalist to imagine that they and leading policymakers are ultimately on the same team.

Don’t forget that the aesthetics of Washington, D.C. (and other power centers) play a big role in this socialization process, too. It’s no accident that government office buildings, for example, are usually built at least in part from the same kind of marble favored by the Roman emperors and the classical Athenians. Nor is it an accident that individual offices at the uppermost levels of government are so beautifully and luxuriously appointed. Enter them and it’s difficult to imagine that anyone but the truly Best and the Brightest could occupy such regal quarters.

Access matters crucially to journalists in two other ways that disincline them to “afflict the comfortable.” First, by publishing leaks intended to advance certain policies or personalities, or block them or undermine them, media types can actually shape events themselves. In other words, they can actively engage in the arena, rather than simply observe it passively. Not surprisingly, many of these would-be movers and shakers regard these chances as prizes to be preserved at practically any and all cost.

Second, a reputation for enjoying big-time access to power-holders can translate into tremendous prestige both within the profession’s ranks and without. And the latter kind of prestige can easily turn into big bucks – in the form of lecture fees and book contracts. The bigger the bucks, moreover, the likelier a journalist is to gain entree to the power-holders’ social circles. As a result, the most successful mainstream journalists become even less inclined than ever to question in any fundamental way leaders who become neighbors, dinner-party companions, and even genuine friends. Moreover, although income levels are never sure-fire predictors of political and policy leanings, the rich rarely become populists, and considerable wealth and status surely don’t make journalists likelier to view promises to “drain the swamp” dispassionately.

So nothing would have dealt the Mainstream Media as damaging a blow as actions making clear that its access was going, going, and just about gone. As noted above, then-President-elect Trump and Press Secretary-designate Spicer were moving for a time in this direction. And few obstacles seemed to stand in their way. What, for example, could be easier than not returning phone calls from Trump-hating pundits like George Will or Charles Krauthammer, or comparably hostile beat reporters from The New York Times or Washington Post? Just as easy would have been to spread the word that these journalists actually are on the outs, and that their days of trafficking in inside information are over. Their remaining professional lives – at least at the national level – would have been measured in minutes. After all, it’s not as if their writing styles or expertise or analytical skills have ever been anything special.

Yet not only have at least some Trump loyalists and populists apparently been speaking with them on the sly. (What other explanation could there be for the sheer volume of reports about various personality and policy feuds inside the White House?) These figures have been speaking with them on the record – at length – not to mention showing up dutifully for those Sunday morning talk shows that have degenerated into little more than chortle-, sneer- and eyeroll-fests. Yet weirder, so has President Trump – even to New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman, whose political reporting was considered so dependably biased toward Hillary Clinton that her Democratic party supporters labeled her a “surrogate.”

This CNN story purports to explain Mr. Trump’s views of Haberman and his willingness to keep talking with her. In fact, it explains nothing – unless you think that the president is unaware of the hacked Democratic National Committee emails outing her prejudice. If he did, would it be remotely plausible to think that “he knows that she matters, that she will not treat him with kid gloves but not be unfair either, that she commands the respect of the political communities in both Washington and New York”?

I’ve heard other explanations for Trump’s views of The Times – that he believes he can gain or keep the upper hand through the force of his personality, that he has an out-of-control wish to be loved by all, that it’s his hometown paper, that no native New Yorkers can resist the impulse to court it. Those last arguments appeared especially convincing when, not two weeks after his election, Mr. Trump visited The New York Times‘ offices for a long interview with many staffers – including columnists and editorial writers – who had pilloried his presidential run. Was he trying to rub the paper’s hostility in its collective nose? Maybe. But in that case, shouldn’t he have demanded that the Times staff traipse over to Trump Tower if it wanted some of his precious time? Was Mr. Trump trying to kill the publication with kindness? Perhaps. But why bother – and inevitably convey the impression that it’s still in the loop?

With the president apparently tacking to the center on policy, it may be inevitable that he’ll continue treating the Mainstream Media ever more conventionally. In which case, his supporters’ best hopes for a revival of authentic Trump-ism — and the country’s best hopes for encouraging the Mainstream Media to play a genuine watchdog role — could be the chief executive’s richly deserved reputation for about-faces.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: How BMW Just Snookered Bloomberg – and the American Public – on Trade

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assembly, Bloomberg.com, BMW, Department of Transportation, domestic content, Harald Krueger, imports, manufacturing, media, National Highway Transportation Administration, NHTSA, Trade, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Poor Harald Krueger! The CEO of German auto giant BMW has been such an important contributor to American manufacturing and therefore to the whole U.S. economy! And that awful President Trump is determined to respond by imposing tariffs that could wreck the global free trade regime (as it’s called) responsible for the company’s valuable U.S. presence.

At least that’s the message yesterday’s Bloomberg article on the subject tried to send. Here’s what it really demonstrated: First, Krueger misled Bloomberg’s reporter.  Second, the author was too lazy or ignorant to do even the most basic research that could have solved this apparent mystery.

Not that his piece was devoid of interesting information – though most of it seems to come straight from BMW press releases. Yes, the company’s Spartanburg, South Carolina factory is its largest on the planet. And I’m happy to take BMW at its word that 70 percent of its U.S.-made vehicles are exported – although some way to confirm this figure independently would be awfully nice. Equally welcome would be a way to verify that the company is America’s largest net exporter.

But these very facts should raise the obvious question: If BMW is such a thoroughly American manufacturer, why is its CEO so worried about higher prices for imports? Luckily, in this case, it couldn’t be easier to find statistics to provide the answer – even though the Bloomberg reporter either didn’t know this or didn’t care.

All he needed to do was to visit the website of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA — an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation) and look through the information presented in its annual American Automobile Labeling Act reports. The title refers to a law requiring all companies that sell passenger vehicles in the United States to tell consumers the percentage of their products that are manufactured domestically.

The system isn’t perfect. Notably, it considers parts and components and other inputs supplied from Canada as “domestic.” But it’s a lot better than nothing. Nor is this mandate brand new. It’s been on the books since late 1992.

And the conclusions it points to couldn’t be clearer: BMW doesn’t so much manufacture vehicles in the United States as screw them together – which adds relatively little to the American economy. And the vast majority of the parts etc that get screwed together in South Carolina come from abroad – mainly Germany. That is, they’re imported.

Further, the company has made precious little progress localizing its supply chains in recent years – that is, adding more U.S. content. And the highest value, most technologically advanced parts of its vehicles, the engines and transmissions, are still 100 percent produced overseas – again, mainly in Germany.

So tariffs would make all these imported parts more expensive, and force BMW either to raise its own vehicle prices and risk lower sales, swallow the price increases and accept lower profits, or move more of its supply chain stateside from its home country. Here are the specifics:

In 2011 – the first year in which NHTSA used its current reporting system – BMW sold 26 models in the United States. Three of them had U.S. and Canadian content levels in the double-digits. (They were between 20 and 30 percent.) And all three were the models that were assembled in South Carolina.

This year’s numbers show 24 BMW models sold in America. The number assembled here rose – to four. And each of them had some more “domestic” content – between 30 and 35 percent.

Just as revealing – in 2011, none of the engines and transmissions in these BMW vehicles was American-made. And as of 2017, this number remained completely unchanged.

But although it’s encouraging that corporate dissemblers like BMW’s Krueger (and gullible, incompetent journalists) can be exposed with the auto content data, it’s discouraging that no such corporate analyses based on legally mandated figures are possible outside the automotive sector. So here’s hoping (once again) that the Trump administration and Congress move promptly to impose similar (or better) content and other reporting requirements throughout American manufacturing. Otherwise, the nation and its leaders will continue flying blind when it comes to trade and globalization – and much of the economy’s future.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: New Lows for Mainstream Media Coverage of Trade & Manufacturing

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Don Lee, exports, imports, intermediate goods, Mainstream Media, manufacturing, media, MSM, National Foreign Trade Council, offshoring lobby, producer goods, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Trade, U.S. Business and Industry Council, William Reinsch, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Everyone, no matter what their views on trade and related economic issues, agrees that reviving the U.S. domestic manufacturing sector represents a major challenge. What everyone needs to agree on is that the goal will never be reached as long as the Mainstream Media keeps presenting views on the subject that are as silly as they are downright ignorant. If you think I’m exaggerating, consider these two recent examples.

The first came in a piece by a team of New York Times reporters earlier this month. According to headline on the December 2 article, “Trump’s Tough Trade Talk Could Damage American Factories.” The reason?

“[M]any existing American manufacturing jobs depend heavily on access to a broad array of goods drawn from a global supply chain — fabrics, chemicals, electronics and other parts. …Mr. Trump’s signature trade promise [steep tariff hikes], one ostensibly aimed at protecting American jobs, may well deliver the reverse: It risks making successful American manufacturers more vulnerable by raising their costs. It would unleash havoc on the global supply chain, prompting some multinationals to leave the United States and shift manufacturing to countries where they can be assured of buying components at the lowest prices.”

To be sure, this article suffers numerous flaws. For instance, what’s the “U.S.-made product” it uses as its signature example of globalization-related trends that (one must logically assume) are being portrayed as beneficial for American industry? A movie seat chair comprised of two-thirds imported parts by value. Talk about a formula for a hollowed out manufacturing base!

But the main problem is with the authors’ apparent belief that these parts and components and materials (often called intermediate or producer goods) must be imported because they’re either not made in America, or can’t be made in America at all, or at competitive prices.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, a huge percentage of American manufacturing output consists precisely of these products. It’s hard to know exactly how big because of shortcomings in U.S. data collection. But the U.S. Census Bureau’s monthly trade figures show that, on a pre-inflation basis, America’s goods exports for the first 10 months of this year have totaled just over $1.2 trillion. Of those, nearly 62.5 percent consisted of “capital goods” and “industrial supplies” – i.e., intermediate goods. (See Exhibit 6 in this release.)

But such exports are surely far greater, because the Census figures don’t break out the numbers for auto parts.

Similar problems plague American manufacturing output numbers, but also leave no doubt about the prominence of intermediate goods in the U.S. industrial complex. They show that, in 2014 (the last year for which detailed data are available), American manufacturing’s pre-inflation production was slightly more than $2 trillion. Of this amount, nearly 37.5 percent consists of products clearly identifiable as intermediate goods (like machinery, metals, and chemicals).

But again, due to data shortcomings, it’s difficult to tease out other leading intermediates – including not only auto parts but semiconductors and other electronics components and electrical equipment. (These figures are calculated from the “GDP by State” interactive tables in this section of the Commerce Department Bureau of Economic Affairs website, which includes national totals.)

So the claim that Trump-ian tariffs would eviscerate domestic manufacturing by cutting off American industry’s access to imported producer goods completely ignores the potentially greatly positive impact of stimulating demand for the nation’s immense (remaining) domestic producer goods complex.

The second example is even nuttier. In a December 12 piece, Los Angeles Times reporter Don Lee quoted an attack on tariffs from William Reinsch, identified as a “distinguished fellow at the nonpartisan Stimson Center.” That’s a big problem right there, as what Lee didn’t mention is that for 15 years, Reinsch was president of the National Foreign Trade Council, a pillar of Washington’s corporate offshoring lobby.

Yet it was Reinsch’s actual statement – and Lee’s apparent failure to see its fatal flaw – that was the real eye-opener. According to Lee, one of Reinsch’s main objections to tariffs broadly is that “We may assemble more stuff here, but we’ll export less because they’ll be more expensive. We’re going to be losing market share. Ultimately, the cost is jobs.”

Of course, as shown by that aforementioned New York Times article, too much American manufacturing already consist of “assembly.” More important, however, is that it seemingly hasn’t occurred to Reinsch or to Lee that the United States is running immense trade deficits overall, and especially in manufacturing. In other words, all else equal, the potential gains of producing “more stuff here” (and Reinsch never explains why it would be restricted to assembly) vastly outweigh the losses from exporting less.

Outsized domestic gains are even likelier because the United States has much more control over its own market and access to it than over foreign markets. Nor do Reinsch and Lee seem to know that the nation has been losing major market share even in advanced manufacturing industries for many years, as documented by several reports of mine issued by the U.S. Business and Industry Council. Here’s the latest.

President-elect Trump’s trade policy proposals are anything beyond controversy, and a thoroughgoing debate over the best globalization approach for the U.S. economy would be a long overdue and welcome development. Sadly, these two articles make clear that too much of the Mainstream Media remain far from making valuable contributions.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: New Yorker Coverage that Follows the Crowd

Tags

Adam Davidson, China, Donald Trump, economists, Financial Crisis, Mainstream Media, media, Peter Navarro, The New Yorker, Trade, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Since yesterday brought my first appearance in that supposed paragon of journalistic excellence, The New Yorker, it’s important to present all the context that staff writer Adam Davidson left out, and that was somehow ignored by the magazine’s legendary but evidently slipping fact-checking staff.

The occasion was a Davidson article on Peter Navarro, the University of California, Irvine economist who has been a leading adviser to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Davidson’s main theme was that the input on China-related trade issues being provided to Trump by Navarro (a professional and personal friend of mine for several years) is “wrong and dangerous.” Major evidence for this proposition, according to the author, was his failure to find more than one other professional economist who shares these positions.

While researching the piece, Davidson asked Navarro for some examples to the contrary, and in an email response, Navarro suggested that the author “Start at least with Peter Morici and Alan Tonelson, two leading authorities.” Davidson pointed out (correctly), “I know Alan and he is not an academic economist. I will reach out to Peter Morici. Please do let me know of other academic economists, by which I mean PhD economists who have published peer-reviewed journal articles.”

Navarro contended in a rejoinder on which I was copied, “Tonelson is a fine economist.” I certainly appreciated the vote of confidence, but felt obligated to confirm to Davidson that “It’s true that I do not hold an economics degree. Nor do I write for peer-reviewed scholarly journals.” But I also added three points that I thought created at least some credibility, noting “At the same time, I wasn’t completely blindsided by the financial crisis” – unlike virtually all of the PhDs in whom Davidson places such stock. To document the claim, I provided a link to this article I wrote in early 2006.

In addition, I observed “Nor did I predict that liberalizing trade with China would prove an unalloyed success for the American economy” – unlike virtually all of the PhDs in which Davidson places such stock even though they proved sadly mistaken on this point as well.

Finally, I told Davidson, “Although I don’t know the full scope of your planned article, I do hope if appropriate it makes note of the many Ph.D. economists down the — literally centuries — who have dissented from Smithian-Ricardian trade theory in whole or in part, from Mill to Keynes to Samuelson.” (Abundant material along these lines can be found in a book review I wrote for The New York Times in 1996 of a history of the idea of free trade which unfortunately is not on-line, but which a friend did find in the Times‘ own archives. I would be happy to furnish a copy to anyone interested.)

I never heard back from Davidson on any of this, and learned yesterday when his article came out that his only apparent interest was my acknowledgment that I lack an academic degree in economics. In particular, he judged my track record in predicting damaging consequences from China-related and similar recent trade policy decisions as far less important than my lack of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from a profession that as a whole has been whoppingly and even disastrously wrong on the most important issues it claims to analyze effectively.

Davidson is hardly alone in this media practice of worshiping the authority of a discipline that has been seriously discredited recently by the real-world standard of results. But it was more than a little dispiriting to see that this version of the herd instinct has even spread to The New Yorker – yes, The New Yorker.

Finally, for truth-in-advertising purposes, I have been asked to do research on trade policy by both the Trump and the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns.  I have not endorsed either candidate for president, though I do support many of Trump’s proposals and have criticized others as being overly timid.  

 

Im-Politic: Clinton’s Campaign Sure Thinks the Mainstream Media is “With Her”

Tags

2016 election, ABC News, Bernie Sanders, CBS News, CNN, Donald Trump, Establishment Media, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, media, MSNBC, NBC News, NPR, PBS, The Intercept, The New York Times, Washington Post, Wikileaks

The word “surrogate” is defined in dictionaries as “a substitute, especially a person deputizing for another in a specific role or office.” Now thanks to the Wikileaks disclosures of internal emails and other strategy documents from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, we know that the Democratic candidate and her operatives believed that many members of the Mainstream Media fit that description for her upcoming White House race as well.

According to a memo released by Wikileaks on Friday, and first reported (to my knowledge) on The Intercept website, the list of journalists viewed by the Clinton-ites as reliable conveyors of her message included numerous opinion journalists whose liberal leanings are no secret. Examples include E.J. Dionne, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, and Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post; and David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, and Gail Collins of The New York Times.

There’s nothing wrong in principle with their presence. There’s no evidence so far that any of them offered their services to the campaign either voluntarily or in response to a request. And unless material comes out indicating active collusion, although surely most are bristling at the suggestion that they’ve been in the tank for anyone in politics, none of these pundits has any control over how they’re viewed by politicians.

But the Clinton characterization of other list members is much more troubling. Dan Balz of the Post isn’t exactly a pure-play columnist – presumably that’s why his employer doesn’t place his pieces on the op-ed page. But his “news analyses” are supposed to occupy some middle ground between opinion and hard news. That concept isn’t necessarily illegitimate. But maybe the Post could clue its readers in on how it views the relevant distinctions, so they could make up their own minds as to how to view these articles?

Another category of listees is problematic, too, but maybe a little less so, since Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Mathews host talk shows on a cable network (MSNBC) that doesn’t try very hard to hide its partisanship. (Similar criticisms of course can be leveled at many of their counterparts on Fox News.)  

Major problems, however, surround the inclusion of news show hosts and anchors who do style themselves as objective journalists. For reasons, I described yesterday, no one should be surprised that ABC News Sunday talk show host George Stephanopoulos is viewed as a Clinton surrogate. But his CBS counterpart John Dickerson? Wolf Blitzer of CNN? Charlie Rose, who does double duty at CBS and PBS?

And scariest of all is the number of listed journalists who present themselves as completely objective beat reporters, like Jonathan Karl of ABC News, Jon King and Jeff Zeleny of CNN, Mara Liasson of NPR, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, and Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post. Moreover, in another memo, the New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman was described as an especially “friendly journalist” who has “never disappointed” the Clinton team with her performance after their promptings.

Since this material dates from spring, 2015, it’s of course nothing more than speculation (however plausible) to venture that Clinton’s operatives have viewed these same journalists as trusted allies in the campaign against her Republican opponent, Donald Trump. (He didn’t declare his candidacy until June.) But the timing is revealing nonetheless because by April, Clinton’s main rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, had thrown his hat into the ring, and it was clear by then that many voters in the party’s left wing were recoiling at the prospect of Clinton as liberalism’s standard-bearer.

As a result, these memos add to the case that much of the national press corps has seen its real mission not as reporting events as objectively as possible, or even as fronting for Democrats, but as defending a center-left status quo against populist challengers of all stripes. Certainly Sanders and many of his backers count themselves as victims.

Fortunately, the only silver lining in this picture is a bright one: Americans’ trust in the mass media to give them the straight news dope is at an all-time low, at least according to Gallup. Undoubtedly that’s a big reason why the establishment media’s finances show signs of weakening across the board. If money really does talk in the ranks of these profit-seeking enterprises, mounting business pressures could push them back to their more responsible roots. Or the Mainstream Media’s owners could arrogantly decide to go down with their ships – in which case the big question will be whether investors more devoted to quality journalism will recognize the vacuum they’ve left.

Im-Politic: More Anti-Trump Media Bias – Including One Example That’s Homophobic

Tags

amnesty, Bloomberg.com, deportation, Donald Trump, Gang of 8, Hillary Clinton, homophobia, illegal immigrants, Im-Politic, immigration reform, Jobs, John McCain, John Micklethwait, Labor Force Participation Rate, labor markets, LGBT, living standards, Mainstream Media, Mark Zandi, Max Ehrenfreund, media, media bias, part-time, productivity, The Washington Post, Vladimir Putin, wages

I sure hope all you RealityChek readers have had a great Labor Day weekend. Unless it was a complete disaster, it had to be better than the last few days’ performance just registered by the Mainstream Media.

On Sunday, I reported on a truly contemptible smear of white working-class Americans delivered by Time magazine uber-pundit Joe Klein. But published this weekend along with this display of mass character assassination was a swipe at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that can only be reasonably interpreted as homophobia, and an example of outright ignorance of the basic economic concept of productivity, and of recent U.S. labor market trends. For good measure, this second piece left out information on its main source that strongly suggests major political bias.

The homophobia was delivered courtesy of no less than John Micklethwait, the current Editor-in-chief at Bloomberg.com who previously held this post at The Economist. Think I’m exaggerating? See for yourself. In the course of an otherwise informative interview with Vladimir Putin, Micklethwait pressed the Russian president in this way for his views of Trump and his Democratic counterpart, Hillary Clinton:

“[Y]ou are really telling me that if you have a choice between a woman, who you think may have been trying to get rid of you, and a man, who seems to have this great sort of affection for you, almost sort of bordering on the homoerotic, you are really going to go for, you are not going to make a decision between those two, because one of them would seem to be a lot more favorable towards you?”

I had to go over this passage several times before convincing myself that I’d actually read it correctly. Even giving Micklethwait’s language the most charitable interpretation it deserves – that the journalist meant it simply as a joke – what exactly distinguishes it from the kind of sniggering locker-room-level humor that’s now recognized as demeaning and hurtful? Therefore, is it remotely plausible to doubt that Micklethwait himself believes that such emotions are fundamentally shameful, and that his attribution of such feelings toward Trump reveal a positively vicious bias against the maverick politician?

Here’s hoping that gay activist organizations come down hard on Micklethwait’s bigotry – and insist that his resignation is needed to guarantee the integrity of Bloomberg’s coverage of both American politics and LGBT issues.

The second major media stumble came in a Saturday Washington Post Wonkblog item spotlighting a claim that Trump’s immigration policies “could put Americans out of work.”

That’s of course an entirely valid and important possibility to report on, but author Max Ehrenfreund (and his editors) failed to fulfill a fundamental journalistic obligation by omitting from his article the unmistakable anti-Trump bias of Mark Zandi, the economist who came up with this finding. Yes, the piece mentioned that Zandi is a former aide to Arizona Republican Senator John McCain. But what it didn’t tell you is that McCain was a charter member of the “Gang of 8” – the bipartisan group of Senators that several years ago launched a powerful push for an amnesty-focused immigration reform bill. Nor did Ehrenfreund mention that Zandi has also contributed to Clinton’s presidential campaign – which has been pushing immigration reform proposals even more indulgent than the Gang’s.

As for the Zandi-Ehrenfreund case that Trump’s immigration policies would backfire powerfully on the U.S. economy, it could not have been more ignorant or incoherent economically. As Ehrenfreund explained it, “deporting [millions of] undocumented immigrants would increase costs for employers, because they would have to compete for the workers remaining in the United States, causing wages to rise.”

Full stop: Amnesty supporters have maintained for years that most illegals are simply filling “jobs that Americans won’t do.” Now they’re saying that if a the supply of American labor shrank due to deportation, increasing wages would summon forth replacements who are either native-born or legally residing in the country? Do tell! Ehrenfreund and Zandi might also have mentioned that robust wage increases have been one of the most conspicuously absent developments during the weak current U.S. recovery since it technically began some seven years ago.

Just as strange was the claim that “Already, the labor force has been shrinking as older workers retire, and the unemployment rate is under 5 percent, which suggests relatively few workers are looking for jobs.” Don’t Ehrenfreund and Zandi know that much of this shrinkage has taken place among working age women and especially men? Or that the number of Americans working part-time involuntarily still remains above pre-recession levels? In other words, there’s an enormous population in the United States that would bid for better-paying jobs.

Perhaps strangest of all is the Zandi-Ehrenfreund contention that “To compensate, businesses would have to increase prices. Some firms would lose customers and could be forced out of business. ‘Asking these folks to leave is going to put a hole in the economy that’s going to cost jobs,’ Zandi said. ‘It’s going to cost the jobs of American citizens.'”

That is, Zandi and Ehrenfreund have either omitted or ruled out the possibility that many companies will eventually respond instead by either automating and/or by otherwise improving their efficiency in ways that boost their productivity – thereby laying the ground for sustainable prosperity and living standard increases going forward. These two pessimists might believe that this venerable maxim of economics no longer holds, and that “this time it will be different.” But maybe they could do readers the courtesy of explaining why?

This Washington Post article’s descent into fakeonomics hardly stops here. But the above reasoning should be enough to establish its silliness – and to prompt the question if comparably doofy pro-Trump studies would ever see the light of day in the paper.

I closed my last post by asking why recent polls show Americans’ confidence in the media has stayed even in the low double-digits on a percentage scale. These Bloomberg and Washington Post pieces don’t merit even single-digit approval.

Im-Politic: Little Thinking in The NY Times on Think Tanks

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Associated Press, Bill Clinton, Brookings Institution, Hillary Clinton, idea laundering, Im-Politic, media, Strobe Talbott, The New York Times, think tanks

Even though news organizations like The New York Times are big outfits where it’s hard to keep the left hand informed about what the right hand is doing, it’s disturbing to see how completely the paper has ignored its own reporting about the sophisticated form of corruption perfected by major American think tanks – and keeps mindlessly citing their work and staff members in articles.

On August 8 – just over two weeks ago – the paper ran on its front page an invaluable report on how America’s major think tanks, most of which are headquartered in Washington, D.C., now habitually produce and distribute material that promotes the interests of their corporate or other contributors. As I’ve explained, this Standard Operating Procedure is not only contemptibly deceptive, but dangerous to our democracy.

For think tanks like the Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic and International Studies are used by policy makers and the media as important sources of information and analysis – largely because they’re seen as objective sources of expertise, just like colleges and universities. (Brookings even uses the “.edu” internet domain name.) When the main purpose of these organizations is to help their donors, they’re engaged in what I’ve called “idea laundering” – garbing special interest pleading in the raiment of scholarly integrity and independence. Worst of all, think tanks rarely disclose specific actual or possible conflicts of interest.

So the obvious question is whether The New York Times, for starters, is taking the hint, and at least begun to change its news coverage to portray think tank findings and views accurately? Sadly, the answer is, “Not yet” – at least judging from The Times‘ mentions, since the article appeared, of Brookings, whose academic pretenses it spent so much space exposing.

According to The Times‘ search engine, the paper has presented the views of Brookings staff seven times since August 8. And it’s as if the reporters and editors don’t read their own paper.

The most recent was The Times publication today of the big Associated Press story detailing the large number of Clinton Foundation donors who managed to finagle meetings or telephone conversations with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton when she served as Secretary of State. The Brookings “fellow” quoted was identified as someone who might have a bias – since Secretary Clinton was once his boss at State. But credit here should go to the Associated Press, not The Times.

Yesterday, a Times piece on the fighting in Iraq quoted a Brookings analyst once with the CIA. No special interest motive is apparent here, although the source, Kenneth Pollack, was a big backer of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. These views weren’t mentioned in the story – but maybe they were a little bit germane?

On August 18 came a Times article purporting to show that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is losing support among white men – widely thought to be one of his core constituencies. Many polls and political specialists were cited, which is all to the good. But one of them was “Brookings demographer William H. Frey” – who has “conducted several simulations that tried to determine how much the turnout among white men without college educations would have to increase for Mr. Trump to win.” His results were bad news for Trump.

That’s in principle fine, too. But here it’s surely relevant that almost none of Brookings’ legion of corporate donors is likely to look favorably on Trump, a loud opponent of the trade and immigration policies these businesses support. Also relevant – Brookings President Strobe Talbott is really chummy with both Secretary Clinton and her husband, the former president. Indeed, he was Deputy Secretary of State in the former’s administration, on top of several other appointive positions.

That same day, some research by Brookings economist Gary Burtless was featured in a Times post on the surprisingly large numbers of men who have been dropping out of the American workforce. Nothing objectionable here, especially since Burtless wasn’t asked to explain his findings.

More problematic was the August 17 Associated Press’ summary of the tax policy plans being touted by the Clinton and Trump campaigns this year. Because the piece, which appeared in The Times, relied in part on the work of Brookings’ Tax Policy Center, and because the issue so politically charged, it seems to me that the Talbott-Clinton connection should have at least been mentioned. Here, the fault lies mainly with the AP – although as a customer of the news service, The Times has wide latitude to edit its material.

Much less partisan was the Reuters article published by The Times August 16 on racial tensions in Milwaukee. The piece, written in the wake of a recent police shooting, offered some Brookings data on the city’s segregated housing patterns that don’t seem to be motivated by any particular agenda.

The final report in The Times, however, was another that missed Brookings’ corporate and Clinton links. The article, again from the AP, summarized and analyzed the two leading presidential candidates’ overall economic plans. The AP in particular should have noted that the Brookings staffer it quoted here, “senior fellow” William Galston, is a “former policy advisor to President Clinton.” Is it any wonder he’s so enthusiastic about amnesty for illegal immigrants!

Since think tanks do house a lot of worthy knowledge and wisdom, and since their donors have every right to participate in policy debates, the solution is obvious: adequate transparency. That way, we could all benefit from this expertise, but also have some sense of who’s been sponsoring it, why – and what it might be downplaying, slanting, or ignoring. And since The Times has done such excellent reporting on what shady institutional characters think tanks can be, is it so unreasonable to expect that the paper starts leading the way?

Im-Politic: Trump-Bashers Who Flunk the Competence Test

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chattering class, Donald Trump, foreign policy establishment, George Will, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, Mary Jordan, media, media bias, Peter Scoblic, pundits, Washington Post

Memo to Mary Jordan, J. Peter Scoblic, and George Will: If you want to write effective critiques of Donald Trump, his policies, and his qualifications to be president, rather than inept hit pieces, don’t ignore facts that are screamingly obvious to at least many of your readers.

Jordan is a Washington Post political reporter who published a piece in this morning’s paper on the irony of the Republican National Convention being held in Cleveland. Why, as she sees it? Because the city “was built, and continues to be shaped, by immigrants” and because a defining message of the presumptive presidential nominee’s campaign is that “it is time to pull up the U.S. welcome mat: build a giant wall on the Mexican border, deport millions of foreigners who did not enter legally, maybe even ban Muslims.”

But here’s what Jordan didn’t believe was worth mentioning. First, the predominantly European immigrants that made up so much of Cleveland’s population during her childhood there arrived in the country legally. They didn’t take advantage of lax U.S. enforcement measures and sneak into America by the millions.

Second, although Jordan acknowledged that “the city still has many poor,” and has seen its population fall by more than half since 1950, she both understated Cleveland’s straits and ignored how one of its prime causes strongly reinforces one of Trump’s other signature issues – the offshoring-friendly trade policies that have devastated former manufacturing centers like Cleveland.

Indeed, Cleveland not only has “many poor.” It’s the second-poorest big city in the country as measured by official poverty rates. Indeed, it might still be number one in poverty – with about 37 percent of its residents falling under the poverty line – except that it’s recently been passed by Detroit, another urban giant blighted in part by trade policy failures. And in the last few years, despite the downtown night spot revival Jordan describes (and in my view hypes, based on numerous visits over the years), Cleveland’s impoverishment has worsened, not improved. Anyone thinking that manufacturing’s troubles have played a marginal role here – a claim that, incidentally, most of the city’s leading Democrats would heatedly reject – doesn’t have a clue about Cleveland.

Just as clumsily one-sided was the article in the Post‘s Outlook section by Scoblic contending that Trump would bring to the presidency a business-related “do-something” outlook that is “precisely the wrong attitude for a president of the United States.” The author’s reasoning:

“[K]nowing how and when to do nothing — or, to put it less absolutely, knowing when to show patience, to tolerate delay and to restrain the urge to act — may be the most critical element of presidential leadership. U.S. interests depend on having a commander in chief who not only can handle the proverbial 3 a.m. phone call but also understands that sometimes it’s best to go back to sleep. Such self-control is necessary for maintaining alliances and defusing confrontations with enemies. On at least one occasion, it probably prevented nuclear war.”

Scoblic, who has written a book on “Conservatism in the Age of Nuclear Terror” and who holds a fellowship at a liberal Washington, D.C. think tank (surprise!), unquestionably raises an important point, since, all else equal, the hotheaded Trump temperament on display during the campaign seems problematic for handling international crises – including nuclear crises.

But why didn’t Scoblic even mention something at least as important in anticipating Trump as America’s diplomat- and command-in-chief: He’s so far run the least interventionist campaign on the foreign policy front in the last few decades of American political history. In fact, over the last few months, the nation’s foreign policy establishment and the Big Media that typically champions its incessant overseas meddling has continually trashed Trump as a neo-isolationist.

It’s certainly possible that a president who seeks to reduce America’s world role could still find him- or herself in dangerous confrontations. But if Trump actually travels down this strategic road, his tenure would be even likelier to reduce the odds of such face-offs for at least three reasons.

First, his focus on domestic reform and reconstruction holds the promise of ending Washington’s practice of portraying every instance of turmoil and upheaval breaking out abroad as a mortal threat to American interests. As a result, he’d logically face less public pressure to “do something” than national leaders who habitually push the figurative panic button whether the stakes for the nation’s safety and prosperity are significant or not.

Second, it stands to reason that a more restrained U.S. foreign policy, and especially one that concentrates more tightly on protecting the homeland, would make fewer decisions and take fewer steps that other great powers would find provocative. This point is nicely illustrated by America’s longstanding policy of expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) reach right up to Russia’s national borders – despite the end of the Cold War. This policy was initiated by the level-headed Bill Clinton, and has been sustained by the equally cool, calm, collected Barack Obama. And arguably nothing has done more to inflame the West’s tensions with Vladimir Putin’s regime – and increase the odds of a military clash in Europe.

The third consideration that Scoblic completely ignores is Trump’s critical view of U.S. alliances. Although the author appears to support the conventional wisdom about these arrangements being essential to safeguarding America’s security, there’s an increasingly compelling case that, especially in the post-Cold War era, they can needlessly function as “transmission belts of war” by committing the United States to fight – mainly against other great powers – on behalf of countries whose fate is no longer even close to vital to America’s own. Worse, the so-called tripwire American forces deployed in powder-keg areas like the Korean peninsula are actually intended to deny Washington the option of standing aside – by ensuring that the sacrifice of tens of thousands of American lives would inevitably result.

Scoblic’s omission of all these points is enough to label this piece a smear job, not an example of intellectually honest analysis.

George Will, of course, is the proudly pompous nationally syndicated columnist and charter member of the Washington, D.C. chattering class that stands to be marginalized if Trump gets elected. So it wasn’t surprising to see that his latest column lamented that the GOP (which he has just left) this week will decide that “the nuclear launch codes and other important things should be placed in the hands of someone not known for nuance, patience or interest in allies and collective security,” and that the Cleveland delegates seem oblivious to the threat confronting the United States from China’s growing expansionism in East Asia.

Let’s assume that Will is right to judge that if the next president handles this challenge with diplomatic or military ineptitude, “the result could be the collapse of America’s position in the world’s most populous, dynamic and perhaps dangerous region,” (I’ve repeatedly argued that this fear is baseless because America’s overriding interests in East Asia are economic, and can be protected by the right economic policies no matter who runs the place politically.)

Confidence in his judgment would be much easier to justify if Will had acknowledged that the dangerously thoughtless trade policies pursued by recent Republican and Democratic presidents and Congresses alike and cheered on by Establishment Media pundits like him, have been instrumental in boosting Chinese military power through massive infusions of wealth and militarily relevant technology alike. In fact, as I’ve documented, these transfers have proceeded apace despite China’s increasing belligerence.  

By contrast, who is the only Republican presidential candidate who has consistently opposed these policies?  Not offshoring lobby flunky Jeb Bush, or the self-proclaimed adult-in-the-room John Kasich or China pseudo-hawks like Marco Rubio or Rick Perry.  Of course, it’s been Trump.

Incidentally, it’s no coincidence that these three examples of unmistakable and easily spotted anti-Trump bias have all appeared – and on the same day, yet! – in the Washington Post, a mainstay of that threatened Beltway insiders’ culture whose editorial opposition to Trump has consistently verged on the hysterical. (For some reason, the Will column is in the print edition, but hasn’t made it to the website yet).

The implications seem as obvious as they are disturbing – far from being limited to the paper’s publisher, editorial board, and pundit roster, the paper’s determination to slant its campaign coverage now extends deep into the layers of editors who are supposed to tether contributors and staff writers to some recognizable version of reality.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why the Big Media Really Don’t Get It

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elites, Establishment Media, income inequality, media, Sarah Kendzior, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Just when you think that the Establishment Media is almost totally hopeless when it comes to reporting on the economy, someone new (at least to me) comes along to restore at least some faith in Big Journalism.

The reporter in question is Sarah Kendzior, and one of her latest pieces stunningly explains one of the biggest frustrations experienced by so many Americans when they read its coverage of economic issues: why major new organizations keep talking up an economy that has failed so much of the nation’s population.

Kendzior’s work has documented and quantified an explanation that many of us have long suspected but couldn’t demonstrate conclusively: “For one thing, pundits and politicians are unlikely to work in the regions where most Americans live.” More specifically, journalists are found in those relatively few big American cities that have, on the whole, enjoyed surging prosperity even as most of the rest of the country has experienced sagging fortunes at best.  And their isolation from Main Street America keeps growing.  As Kendzior has found:

“In 2004, one out of eight journalism jobs was based in New York, Washington DC, or Los Angeles—a high number even for that era. By 2014, that number had changed one of every four, even as the cost of rent in those cities rose astronomically, and the number of unpaid and low-paid positions exploded. This has led to journalism increasingly becoming an occupation of elites, with the reporters of the rest of the country underrepresented and the concerns of their communities underreported.”

This piece by Kendzior makes another economic argument that deserves a lot more attention: The geography of prosperity looks set to become even more highly concentrated going forward. Why? Because the yawning and expanding gap between living standards outside these islands of affluence and living costs inside them is preventing talented American from moving to cities and utilizing their abilities to the fullest. To quote Kendzior again:

“[T]he talent of the heartland is wasted as job-seekers from these regions remained trapped. For millennials, many of whom are saddled with massive college debt and are expected to complete unpaid internships, the situation is particularly dire. Moving to the city where their field is located can prove impossible without family wealth. Careers are ending before they have the chance to begin.”

Kendzior’s analysis makes clear that this disheartening trend will be generally neglected by this elite media, too. But her own work encouragingly indicates that such developments won’t be ignored quite so completely, and I’m looking forward to more of it.

Im-Politic: Mainstream Media Hit (Another) New Low

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blogging, China, Im-Politic, Jennifer Rubin, Jobs, journalism, media, punditocracy, social media, Trade, traditional media, Washington Post

I almost feel like I’m doing a public disservice in writing about a blog by the Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin. After all, I’ve always believed that any publicity is good publicity. So I’ve worried that if I called any attention to the continuous stream of neoconservatism-drenched talking points she and her employer evidently regard as commentary and analysis, I’d simply add, however modestly, to her already wildly undeserved level of prominence.

Still, her May 6 tract – “Stop Trump, then remake conservative politics” – contained one statement so outlandish even by the degraded standards of the American punditocracy that the piece per se and its implications demand scrutiny.

The statement: According to Rubin, “Telling [American] workers that millions of jobs went to China is a lie….”

However strong my own views, I would be the last person to insist that the subject of U.S.-China trade and broader economic policy on the one hand, and American job loss on the other, is “settled economics.” As with many major public policy issues, there’s abundant evidence and theoretical work supporting many different positions. And so nothing could be more legitimate than expressing even the strongest of opinions or making the strongest of claims along a lengthy spectrum of possible viewpoints. If these opinions and claims are backed with some evidence, or reasoned argumentation, so much the better.

But what should be completely out of bounds is declaring, a la Rubin, that one set of such claims is a deliberate fabrication, and presenting no evidence whatsoever,

Indeed, Rubin could have conveyed her point strongly in any number of valid, overlapping ways.

>She could have contended that claims of China-related job loss are greatly exaggerated. (Her phrasing hints at this possibility, but only indirectly at best. That is, if it’s a lie that “millions of jobs” have been lost, does mean that the cost might be one million? Or several hundred thousand? Heaven forbid that Rubin would specify.)

>She could have contended, as have do many, that most jobs thought to have been sent to China are actually casualties of improving productivity.

>She could have argued that many more U.S. jobs have been created than eliminated by expanded American commerce with China.

>She could have insisted that whatever the relative numbers, the jobs created on net by the growth of U.S.-China trade and investment have been better than those displaced.

>She could have claimed that even if net job loss has been suffered by the United States, the long-term employment trends will reverse, or at least improve.

>She could have declared that other economic gains outweigh the employment effects of America’s business ties with China.

>She could have stated that this expanded bilateral trade and investment has created or will create non-economic benefits for the United States that deserve higher priority than employment changes.

>Or she could have offered various combinations of blends of these arguments.

Thus, Rubin’s evidence-free charge of simple fabrication raises the most fundamental questions about her qualifications as a commentator – and about the decision of a major national newspaper to award her, and now keep her in, this plum position. Just as important, the publication of Rubin’s statement raises the most questions about the Post‘s editorial procedures.

Are bloggers’ offerings never fact-checked? Are bloggers permitted to violate venerable rules of sound argumentation because they rank lower on the newspapers’ hierarchy than full-fledged columnists? Are bloggers’ offerings even read before publication by any Post editorial staff members? Does the Post believe that this Rubin missive met its definition of acceptable opinion journalism (or of blogging, if the two are differentiated)?

Of course, Rubin has the right to write anything she wishes (or at least anything that doesn’t violate libel and slander laws, or that reveals officially protected secrets). And the Post has the right to publish or post anything it wishes (provided it accords with the above criteria). But especially in this still emerging age of rambunctious, too-often-slipshod social and alternative media, financially beleaguered traditional news organizations like the Post keep insisting that they’re playing a vital role in upholding vital standards of high-quality reporting and discourse. With the posting of Rubin’s blog, that argument got decidedly weaker.