MediaWatch: January 1992
Table of Contents:
Janet Cooke Award: ABC: Romance With France
Equating caring with government spending is a time-honored liberal tactic. Conservatives have come to expect this kind of argument from liberal activists, but now it's coming from reporters. On December 3 and 5, ABC's American Agenda segments celebrated the top-down bureaucratic children's programs of France, equating their large government budgets with large hearts. For what amounts to a one-sided advertisement for French socialism, ABC's American Agenda earned the January Janet Cooke Award.
On World News Tonight December 3, Peter Jennings began the network's advocacy campaign: "On the American Agenda tonight, France. One of the things we have found with every subject we address on the Agenda...is how often there are lessons to be learned from other societies. It is one thing for the United States to spend less on children than almost any other country in the industrialized world. It is another to see what those countries get in return for their dollar, or in this case, their franc."
Reporter Carole Simpson then told the tale of the Rechantier family and their new baby. "The infant's mother...takes comfort in knowing she and her husband don't have to worry about whether they can afford Romaine's health care or day care or her education. That's because the Rechantier family lives in France. The French version of Social Security funds a wide array of government health and welfare programs targeted to families with children, all families, rich or poor. The money comes from considerable taxes on businesses and workers' salaries. Everybody pays and everybody benefits."
Simpson never specified what "considerable" meant. In fact, France's top income tax rate is a stifling 56.8 percent. When asked by MediaWatch about the cost of implementing a French-style program in America, Simpson cited Barbara Bergman of American University, who estimates a start-up cost of $217 billion. But Simpson left uncomfortable numbers out of the broadcast.
Simpson was more reckless with claims like this: "Like the United States, France has its share of poor people and a large immigrant population. But its poverty rate is one of the lowest in the world. Only five percent of children in France live in poverty compared to twenty percent in this country."
Simpson told MediaWatch her source was the liberal economist Timothy Smeeding, who has arrived at numbers like this by defining poverty as less than 40 percent of national median income. In a recent study for the Joint Center for Political Studies, Smeeding put the poverty rate for families with children at 17.5 percent for the United States, and 5.3 percent for France. But of course, the median income in France is below the median income in the United States, so many of the U.S. "poor" would not have been classified as such in France.
Liberal activists often skew perceptions of our all-around standard of living compared to other industrialized nations. For example, in 1980, 1.8 percent of poor families in the United States went without a flush toilet in their homes. By contrast, 17 percent of all families in France were without flush toilets in that year, a worse ratio than Spain, Italy, West Germany, and Britain.
Simpson went on to tell the story of two Lebanese immigrants who benefitted from France's "free" services. (Free? Tell that to French taxpayers.) She concluded: "Free universal health care for children and cash allowances for parents continue and even increase throughout children's lives, up to the age of twenty, as long as they stay in school. When you see how France cares for its children, you can't help but wonder why the United States can't do the same for our children. Americans continue to study and debate what to do about poor children and poverty, but the French decided long ago. Their system of social welfare is based on the belief that investing in the children of France is investing in the future of France."
Two nights later, anchor Sam Donaldson repeated Simpson's vague endorsement of the costly French welfare state: "In France, all families, rich and poor, share a wide variety of benefits. The price tag is high, but so is the quality of what they receive."
In this report, Simpson promoted France's statist day care system: "French parents have what few American parents have -- high quality day care at low cost, no matter what their income. That's because day care is regulated and subsidized by the French government. Five decades ago, with more and more women entering the labor force, France began instituting family support programs, including day care and preschool. The country made a national commitment to produce healthy, educated children and productive, working parents. Perhaps President Mitterrand put it best: he said France will be strong in its families and blossom in its children."
Simpson concluded the story: "The French system works so well that several American organizations are working to implement a similar national day care policy in the United States. The biggest barrier seems to be cost. But the French, with enviable results, have demonstrated their will to spend whatever it takes to care for their children."
Neither report included any critics. Simpson told MediaWatch that American Agenda segments are different than regular news: "They're not the standard news story where they have both sides and someone will say this is good and this is bad....There was never any desire or intention to include someone [critical]. Of course, there were many people who criticized, and I can tell you, and I've heard many of them, and there were criticisms in France among the French people, about how much taxes they were paying."
Simpson defended her slanted comparison of American and French poverty: "You do not see the grinding poverty in France...that I see on the west side of Chicago. The safety net is much more in place in France. There is no doubt about that." When asked if we need an expanded "safety net," Simpson replied "I think so." Asked if the Reagan and Bush administrations are part of the problem, she responded: "I have been on the record on that. I've said it on Brinkley, I have." At the end of our conversation, she joked: "Let me have it. Slam me. Blast me."
Okay, Carole, here it is: ABC's American Agenda is supposed to be an in-depth exploration of an issue, but there's nothing "in-depth" about providing only one side. Any political activist can do that. Journalists are supposed to do better.
