Telling a Fuller Story About Sensationalized Claims

By Gary Berg-Cross

Sensational claims have been taken to task here in the Secular Perspectives blog. Luis Granados took on The supposedly scientific Prayer Study proving the existence of God and Robert of rwahrens just had to rant about:

“another of those idiotic news items where they take a common every day item and claim that the government has paid an exorbitant price for it. This one is for muffins. Muffins they claim the government paid $16 for.”

Both blogs expose an instance of a sensationalized claim, seemingly but not really grounded in facts, which advances some popular bias and lingering hope. Wouldn’t it be great if Science could prove that God exists and that we can get what we pray for - or at least what we good people pray for to the right god and not what those fanatics are praying for. Luis shows some of the fraud behind the claim for prayer. The news report that Robert took on week about alleged spending $16 a piece for breakfast muffins and $8 for a cup of coffee for employees attending a conference in Washington two years ago was quickly countered by avalanche of criticism that pointed out it was a half baked report. Only later did papers like the Washington Post report, that the price included not just a muffin, but a continental breakfast of baked goods, fresh fruit, coffee, tea, soft drinks, tax tips as part of the use of the conference space.

Media is prone to over-hyped and controversial news pieces because of the pressing need to increase viewership/readership. On the other hand it may not cover protests such as Wall Street is being occupied against corporate greed. There is a good argument that it did not get adequate coverage till there was a sensationalized violence- see Op-Ed: Wall Street is Occupied protest not getting media coverage

Sensationalism sells and may include reporting about generally insignificant matters and events such as $16 muffins appeal to the emotions are proxies for important arguments such as whether government is too big and wasting money. Equivalent dog whistle stories such as corporate wooing of pols by overpaying for Redskin booths and services may not be given equal treatment.

Consider the quick response to the grand muffin claim after The Washington Post, among other media outlets, pronounced word of the offense in a front page story, based on a Justice Department auditor's report. Senior Republican Senator Chuck Grassley who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee (which has oversight of the Justice Department), said the report was a blueprint for the first cuts that should be made by the "super committee" searching for at least $1.2 trillion in savings. Later NBC's Brian Williams featured the Justice Department's offense in that day evening's news lineup. As rwahrens feared an ill-informed link was made to sensationalized examples of wasteful government spending such as the Lockheed bill for $640 for custom molded toilet seat covers.

Wyatt Kash, Editorial Director of AOL Government contextualized the sensationalization well:

“Regardless, to put the blame totally on government employees, as the auditors and then the media so quickly did, and not at least in part on what and how hotels routinely charge for conferences services, is another example of how easy it has become in America to demonize the federal workforce--a group of dedicated public servants who in reality are working tirelessly to protect our country, provide services to the needy and tackle problems that are bigger than any one of us can solve alone. “

More examples of loud stories include misleading statements, omitting key facts and information and half truths as discussed in my Flexible Thinking in a Time of Imprecise Statements.

Advocates can get away with this because we live in a time of head spinning news overload. In our news cycle one story steps on the previous so rapildy that we don’t have to reflective on the core information that often is no more than half truth and innuendo. See my Stressed Buffet Offered by the Hurricane, News Quake for more on this phenomena.

What would David Hume Say?

By Gary Berg-Cross

Recently on Bill Maher's Real Time show Keith Olbermann and he engaged in a skit yelling at an unhearing "typical Republican voter" who was encased in a plastic bubble. It makes the point that some Republicans seem disconnected from reality and have their own set of facts. They are seemingly in denial about popular political topics like taxes. The fact is that taxes are at their lowest level in 50 years and that we’ve had relative prosperity with higher rates. They seem to be forgetful and are ahistorical at times, which can make conversation difficult.

They chose not to dwell on the fact that their hero Ronald Reagan raised taxes. They will claim that Obama’s stimulus did not create jobs. This ignores the Congressional Budget Office statement the stimulus created 1 million to 2.9 million jobs in one quarter alone. On climate change they will focus on one or two stats or a scandal and ignore the big picture. Instead they have beliefs that tie to things that seem like flat facts but are not exactly true in context. One example is the Fox news repeated claim as part of the fairness issue that “51% of Americans pay no federal taxes truths.” Well yes, but many of these are elderly and living on unemployment. Others earn less than $20,000 a year and do have payroll deductions.

These type of things are more misleading than true of untrue because they uses slippery categories. They would not pass David Hume’s principles of formalization concepts or based on observations. Long ago Hume warned that many bits of speech pretend to be knowledge, but in fact are part of metaphysical bubbles. He put it this way:

“When we feel compelled to peruse the stacks in libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion! (David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Eric Steinberg [Hackett Publishing Company, 1993])

Describing Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme" that will vanish for people in their 30s and 40s is one of those grey, slippery statements perhaps generated by ideology more than facts. Social Security is not a fraudulent criminal enterprise designed only to benefit current participants in the program or some wicked set of government officials that want to personally profit from it. The scheme idea ignores Social Security’s reality as a legitimate government program with a proven record and an intent to serve both current and future generations of retirees. The New York Times did some fact checking on this subject and stated that:

“Government projections have Social Security exhausting its reserves by 2037, absent any changes, but show that the payroll tax revenues coming in would cover more than three-quarters of benefits to recipients then.”

There’s lots that Hume would commit to the flames in today’s news stream of talking points. It is perhaps a legacy of modernity to be too far from the Enlightenment to remember to use some of its sounder principles such as critical thinking and respect for testable facts.

A Decade of Financial Foolishness

The assassination of Osama Bin Laden takes many of us back to events happening 10 years ago. I was reminded of another aspect of the prior decade by Lori Montgomery’s May 1, 2011 Washington Post article “Running in the red: How the U.S., on the road to surplus, detoured to massive debt ”http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/running-in-the-red-how-the-us-on-the-road-to-surplus-detoured-to-massive-debt/2011/04/28/AFFU7rNF_story.html

She starts out with a few facts showing how “the nation’s unnerving descent into debt began a decade ago with a choice, not a crisis.” Economics is full of facts mixed with one hopes plausible projections. Back in January 2001 we had a balanced budget and the Congressional Budget Office forecast ever-larger annual surpluses indefinitely with more than a $2 trillion surplus by 2011. Now we expect to owe more than $10 trillion to outside investors by the end of this year. In her article Montgomery documents how political leaders wasted the opportunity by taxes, waging 2 wars with borrowed funds and disregarding warnings. We lived dangerously avoiding reality and have even arrived at trying times. And part of this is a distorted view of what happened. A majority of Americans have been convinced that the fault lays in wasteful or unnecessary federal programs for the nation’s budget problems. The contextual facts are otherwise. True, the Bush administration pushed through 2 unfunded wars which cost to date over a trillion dollars. But these were avoidable and has more impact than routine increases in defense and domestic spending. So let’s avoid such wars. According to a new analysis of CBO data, routine defense and domestic account over the last 1o years accounted for only about 15 percent of our financial deterioration. We could have absorbed this without a crisis. So where did the large deficit come from? The article points to the folly on the revenue side and the consequences of lax fiscal policy:

“erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts. Together, the economy and the tax bills enacted under former president George W. Bush, and to a lesser extent by President Obama, wiped out $6.3 trillion in anticipated revenue. That’s nearly half of the $12.7 trillion swing from projected surpluses to real debt. Federal tax collections now stand at their lowest level as a percentage of the economy in 60 years.”


The article goes on to factually document the types of erroneous thinking that got us into the mess. One is that tax cuts could stimulate the economy etc. Sound familiar? Well the cuts didn’t work. There was also the argument that less oversight would allow the capitalist system to work more efficiently. Business Columnist Steven Pearlstein blew the whistle on this back on 2007 as he apportioned blame for the rapidly advancing financial crisis. He noted the ineptitude and lack of leadership of Wall Street and the nation's financial regulators. They were silent on the coming collapse, although as we know many positioned themselves to either take advantage of the Big Short or at least protect themselves by cashing out. In Pearlstein's view government intervention was inevitable, essential, and an act of real leadership. Yet now many ignore the facts and blame government for the collapse.

Pearlstein argues that Wall Street's top executives showed little, if any, leadership throughout the crisis which "attests to their moral and political bankruptcy." Yet they seemed to largely escaped blame and their role is not a big part of the budget debate.

When I think of the country we live in now and the halting conversations about our problems I think of Peter Weir's 1982 movie, The Year of Living Dangerously. There we are treated to a Casablanca-like movie updated for modern political intrigue and fabrication. Instead of a world war we have daily rumors of coups by left or right wing extremists. Bureaucratic corruption is routine while the bulk of people are slowly starving to death. Into this comes a naive reporter in pursuit of a big scoop. Can he afford to tell the truth and get the facts out? To do so risks the lives of his newsreel cameraman, photographer and source. Maybe it is better to be quiet, play along and enjoy the good life that 1st world privilege affords. That’s the type of quiet we experience running up to the collapse in 2007-2008. Now there seems a quiet about the real issues as people compete to slash the federal budget without handling the revenue side. We aren’t exactly in The Year of Living Dangerously world, but the past 10 years have been a period of overlooking problems and misrepresenting things. This year may be more of the same. Even Thomas Gradgrind, the notorious headmaster in Dickens's novel Hard Times might be appalled. His bottom line was money, the pursuit of money and profit. He represents too one dimensional a person focused on isolated facts and things that can be hacked into numbers, but his words still warn us:

"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!"'