Straight-news stories are supposed to present the facts, sometimes including judgments about those facts from qualified persons, but generally leaving it to readers, viewers or listeners to reach their own conclusions — a concept Associated Press Writer Andrew Taylor apparently missed in journalism school.
Here’s how Taylor begins his report about Senate rejection today of a measure that would’ve given people collecting Social Security benefits a one-time bonus.
The Senate on Wednesday rejected a proposal by President Barack Obama to give people on Social Security a $250 bonus check.
Republicans and Democratic deficit hawks combined to reject the idea by a 50-47 vote. The plan, offered in the Senate by Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would have added $14 billion to the out-of-control budget deficit.
We expect Republicans to characterize our very large budget deficit as “out of control.” They’re in the business of saying anything that casts President Obama and Democrats in a bad light, including depicting them as wanton free spenders. We don’t expect an AP staff writer to do Republicans’ work for them.
That loaded reference was just the beginning. In subsequent paragraphs, Taylor provides more of the same (emphasis ours).
. . . The costly measure follows passage Tuesday of a stopgap $10 billion measure to fund several of the same programs through the end of the month.
The daunting price tag on the measure guarantees more complications and an even rougher path through the Senate than experienced by the bill passed Tuesday.
Judgmental and emotionally loaded descriptive terms have their place in “news analysis” pieces, commentaries and feature stories. They don’t belong in straight news stories.
We don’t know if Taylor’s writing in this story reflects his notions or pushes others’ point of view. We do know he needs counseling from a no-nonsense editor, one who will take him to one side and tell him to report it straight, saving his opinions for pieces clearly labeled “opinion.”
There was a time when you could go down to the college newspaper office and read stories off the teletype from AP and UPI that were straight objective writing. No more. The days of objective journalism are long gone. Look at even Google or Yahoo News and you find the same slanted journalism and it doesn’t have a liberal slant.
It doesn’t surprise me one bit, Associated Press is a cooperative owned by newspaper, radio stations and TV stations, mainly in the US.
AP used to write objectively and let the local editors put the slant in the story and write the headlines. Not any more.
It’s funny, I can’t recall too many media uses of phrases such as “out-of-control” and “daunting price tag” between 2003 and 2009.
Maybe it’s just me.
I’m not surprised at this as I see it all the time. The Wash Post is just as bad and so is NPR for that matter.
PS: Wonder if this guy happened to mention anywhere that there was no increase in SS payments this year?
I only had time to take a brief glimpse at that news story. Hmmm, an out-of-control budget deficit, the daunting price tag of some sort of liberal giveaway program. Thankfully, our thrifty responsible Republicans put the kibosh on those tax-and-spend Democrats
Yahoo.com does this all the time too. I go to that site a lot since it isn’t slow and cumbersome like MSNBC and some of the “alternative” news sites. But you have to wade through an awful lot of “Obama’s last-ditch attempt to save his shattered presidency” drivel.
Demeur, I’ve noticed this kind of thing more in recent years, although not always this blatant. I suspect one problem is that news media have gone on a binge of getting rid of copy editors and replacing more-expensive senior staff with less-expensive junior people and interns. The result is more errors of fact and style, more ambiguity and slant creeping in. Catching and dealing with those things is what copy editors are for.
Holte, local papers put the slant in the story? In most places I’ve been local papers, if anything, tried to ferret out and eliminate slant. Maybe it’s been different where you are. Do you read the Atlanta Journal?
Randal, I don’t have any statistics, but my recollection is that you’re right. I predicted when he made them that Bush’s huge tax cuts would do far more to grow the deficit than the economy, which is just what happened. I don’t remember even editorialists having much of a problem with those fiscally irresponsible actions.
LP, maybe we all need to call them out about it more. Letter to the newspaper editor, e-mail to online and broadcast media, etc.
Tom, that story didn’t require deep delving. Agreed about Yahoo! News and framing. Yahoo’s top stories are usually AP and Reuters. I don’t know if the news services or Yahoo put the headlines and teasers on.
I used to work on the biggest regional newspaper in England, regional meaning not London, The Birmingham Post and Mail, I used to see how sub-editors slanted stories that came in on the wire.
Leslie is right, NPR is getting just as bad. Journalism is dead, Edward R. Murrow is spinning at 4500 RPM right about now, and really good catch, SW!
SW,
I echo Bee. Good catch. Like you, I wonder if it’s ideological bias or the reporter feeling he’s lined up with a consensus viewpoint.
Or could be the guy’s just an asshole.
Holte, that’s quite the experience. I’ve read that your former countrymen have a different, kind of no-holds-barred, approach to reporting the news than what used to be the standard here, at least for non-tabloid newspapers. What you say confirms that. Alas, it seems what used to be the standard here is slipping.
Bee, I rarely listen to NPR. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it’s been affected for the worse by one or more Bush appointees.
Oso, it could be either of those possibilities, or it could be that, consciously or otherwise, he parroted Republican phrases he heard while gathering information for his story. Whatever the case, a good copy editor should have caught and dealt with it.
It seems to me that “out of control budget deficit” is an objective statement.
If not, please tell me at what level it becomes out of control.
Nice of you to discover the religion of journalistic objectivity after cheerleading the editorial sneering of alleged journalists such as Olberman throughout the Bush years.