Kevin Drum brought up a point this afternoon that’s been bugging me all day. It turns out that today offers a perfect case study in the media’s inability to tell Americans when their president is lying.
Bush, in addressing the alleged “crisis” in Social Security, told his hand-picked audience yesterday:
“As a matter of fact, by the time today’s workers who are in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt. So if you’re 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and you’re beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now. And that’s what we’re here to talk about, a system that will be bankrupt.”
It’s an obvious, demonstrable lie. Not a spin, or a fudge, or a slip of the tongue, or a gray area. Bush has to know there isn’t a shred of evidence that Social Security is going “bankrupt,” because it’s not, but he said it anyway.
As Drum put it, “[T]here are obviously lies designed to convince young people that they will get no Social Security benefits at all when they retire — something that every serious analyst knows to be flatly false. Even in the worst case scenario beloved of Republicans, Social Security will never be bankrupt. It will merely pay out reduced — but still substantial — benefits starting 40 or 50 years from now.”
The major news outlets seemed anxious to tell readers that Bush’s remarks were simply untrue, but they wouldn’t go through with it. They know the truth, they assume Bush knows the truth, but they just couldn’t bring themselves to tell readers that what’s plainly obvious: their president is lying about Social Security.
This is likely to be a very serious problem in the coming months.
The Washington Post made it a typical he-said, he said problem.
…[S]ome critics say Bush is exaggerating the Social Security problem to build support for his plan for private accounts. For one, they say, the term “bankrupt” does not apply to Social Security. If nothing is done to the system, Social Security could still pay about 73 percent of promised benefits in 2042, when the system’s “trust fund” of Treasury bonds will be depleted, Social Security’s chief actuary has calculated.
So, Bush says it’s going bankrupt and some critics say it isn’t. Which is true? The Post doesn’t tell us, even though one side is clearly right and the other is clearly not.
The New York Times did the same thing.
Many Democrats and economists say that Mr. Bush is exaggerating the problem, and that Social Security could be fixed with modest tax increases and a cut in benefits. Even without changes, Mr. Bush’s critics say, the system would be able to pay three-quarters of promised benefits four decades from now, when baby boomers have long retired.
Democratic leaders quickly stepped forward on Tuesday to challenge the president. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the party’s whip, accused Mr. Bush of “fear mongering,” and Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, a senior Democrat on the Social Security Subcommittee, said his party’s priority should be to “prevent the president from wrecking the bedrock of income security protection.”
Are the “many Democrats and economists” right? They are, but the NYT refused to say so.
You can find the exact same problem in today’s LA Times, USA Today, Reuters, and others. I can’t find a single story anywhere that actually tells people, directly and as a matter of fact, that Bush was just wrong.
Most readers/viewers will hear Bush say the system is going bankrupt, hear Dems and experts say it’s not, and assume the truth is somewhere in between. Thus, Bush has a built-in incentive to keep lying: he knows the media won’t call him on it. Indeed, this dynamic encourages him to make his deceptions bolder.
As I’ve said on probably too many occasions, it’s terribly frustrating when journalists, in the name of some ambiguous “balance,” refuse to draw conclusions, even when one is plainly available. They’re so afraid of being accused of bias, reporters won’t point to demonstrable falsehoods, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions.
When dealing with objective truths, this is absurd.