MediaWatch: November 1990
Table of Contents:
Television's Budget Blunders
Network news correspondents often portray themselves as the watchdogs of government, but in covering the recent budget dealings, they served more as watchdogs for the government. If viewers wanted to know the daily details about what the White House and Congress were negotiating, the networks kept them informed. But in the midst of determining the winners and losers of the political maneuvering, the networks never reported that despite alleged "cuts," federal spending continues to soar.
To document trends in budget coverage, MediaWatch analysts watched every ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, CNN Evening News and NBC Nightly News story from the emergence of the first budget bill September 24 to October 28, the day after a budget passed. In total, 231 news stories were reviewed to determine:
How many reported the actual size of next year's budget, compared to this year's budget? Zero. The federal budget for fiscal year 1990 was $1.26 trillion. The latest figures from the Office of Management and Budget project a 1991 budget of $1.36 trillion. That's an increase of $100 billion in one year or an 8 percent increase, hardly the model of penny-pinching austerity. But not one reporter managed to compare the overall budgets of 1990 and 1991. Instead, the reporters' emphasis on "getting a deal" accepted politicians' promises to reduce the deficit at face value. Reporters led viewers to assume the budget deal will reduce the deficit by $500 billion over five years, or whatever the two sides claimed as talks wound down to the finish. But bipartisan budget agreements were passed in 1982, 1984, 1987, and 1989. In each case, promises were made to curtail spending growth and politicians assured the people that the revenues from tax increases would be used to reduce the deficit, and instead, the spending went to new programs.
How many reported that many, if not all of the budget's "spending cuts" were not spending cuts at all, but cuts in projected increases? Zero. Reporters did a number of stories on the disastrous effects of spending cuts, particularly Medicare cuts, but not one reporter explained that the "cuts" they were referring to were not cuts, but reductions in spending increases. "Tonight both sides say that unlike budget deals of the past, these cuts are real," emphasized ABC's Ann Compton on September 30. Simply by reporting phony "spending cuts" as real, the media participated in misleading the American taxpayer. Since 1984, tax revenues have risen by an average of $78 billion a year. If spending had been held to the rate of inflation, we would have had a surplus years ago. Federal revenues are projected to rise $397.8 billion dollars over the next five years -- without the coming tax hikes.
Medicare is a perfect example. Every network told viewers Medicare would be "cut" $60 billion ad devoted at least one entire story to "profiles in suffering." All four networks ran stories on the fight against "cuts" featuring liberal lobbyists like Ron Pollack of Families United for Senior Action. Reporters didn't say that Medicare is the fastest growing program in the budget, and without "cuts," is scheduled to grow 12 to 13 percent a year. Over the five years of the new budget deal, Medicare spending is still projected to grow from $105 billion to $168 billion, a 60 percent increase.
How many reported the actual effect of a full one-year sequestration on next year's budget? Zero. Reporters also ignored the basic facts and figures on the sequester. A full one-year sequester would have cut spending by $85.4 billion. As a percentage of a $1.3 trillion budget, that's a 6.5 percent cut from previously scheduled increases. Even after the sequester, overall federal spending would increase $15 billion.
Instead of reporting the actual numbers, reporters bought the government line that the allowed spending increase required a shutdown, calling it a "disaster," a "train wreck" that "cripples the country," in which "everyone loses." NBC showed the least restraint , reporting "it appears we are going over the precipice," "an awful precipice," "the guillotine coming down," an "alternative too horrible to contemplate," and "a long nightmare with no morning." On October 6, ABC's Steve Shepard warned: "This coming Tuesday, with government workers not on the job, millions of Americans will experience frustration, and in some cases, pain."
How many reporters concentrated on the savings from cutting government waste? Zero. "Waste, fraud, and abuse" may sound like an empty catch phrase, but Charles Bowsher, head of the General Accounting Office, estimates there is $180 billion a year in waste, fraud, and mismanagement. The networks ignored the hundreds of GAO reports identifying waste, and even the $60 billion in annual savings identified by the Congressional Budget Office. Citizens Against Government Waste has issued a report calling for $305 billion in waste reduction over the next five years. All these arguments were totally ignored.
The networks knew the issue of waste was on the minds of taxpayers. "As for the public, an overnight ABC News poll shows that 65 percent of Americans don't like the agreement, mostly because they don't think it's necessary. They think the real problem is government waste," Peter Jennings reported on October 1. But ABC went on to do another story on the victims of Medicare "cuts" and never aired a story on waste.
NBC's Andrea Mitchell did point out on October 22 that legislators were including pet projects for their home districts in the budget negotiations. After the budget passed, the networks mentioned a few examples of pork-barrel spending. Most of these were first reported in newspapers, like the $500,000 to renovate Lawrence Welk's boyhood home. But no reporter devoted a story to the annual pork parade before the budget passed, and no one looked into how it could be stopped to reduce the deficit.
Just as the budget summit was an insular process, so was media coverage. Of 523 soundbites, 365 (or 70 percent) were of White House or congressional officials. When the networks went to outside analysts on the politics and economics of the budget, liberal analysts outnumbered conservatives 33 to 11. CBS did bring on conservative economists such as Arthur Laffer and Lawrence Kudlow, but they still preferred liberals 16-6, and often echoed their arguments. When Bob Schieffer put on Robert Greenstein of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities October 18, he presented only Greenstein's figures to show how the rich would win and the poor would lose under the proposed budget plan.
The Washington budget process looks increasingly unreal to the American people, and network budget coverage only added to the unreality, reporting on nonexistent spending cuts and their victims, and clucking abstractly about the deficit while ignoring the huge annual increase in spending.
Budget coverage in the last few months is merely the latest demonstration of how the national media don't bring the concerns of the American people to official Washington, they bring the concerns of official Washington to the American people. The network anchors and reporters who covered the budget process have no right to claim the mantle of government watchdog, since they reported the news exclusively in the language of the government establishment.
