MediaWatch: November 1990
Table of Contents:
Bureacrat Bias
When Citizens Against Government Waste held a nationwide Taxpayers Action Day protest on October 27, only CNN reported the story. But all four networks repeatedly covered federal worker protests and each dedicated at least one whole story to how spending "cuts" would hurt federal workers. When the House passed the final budget compromise, ABC's Judd Rose reported: "The intense partisan warfare, the seemingly endless rhetoric, and the anxiety of federal government workers came to an end today."
Reporters ignored the other side of the story: that government workers have never suffered serious layoffs, and face much less anxiety than the private sector. In fact, bureaucrats are impossible to fire, and many work in obsolete offices. In his June Washington Monthly article "How to Cut the Bureaucracy in Half," Scott Shuger found some astonishing stories, like this one from an employee at HHS:
"We have enormous numbers of people who don't do anything. And I mean anything. One sells real estate. I spend an enormous amount of time on my volunteer work. There's a tremendous amount of socializing. People fall into each other's arms every day as though they had not seen each other for a year, catching up on what they had for dinner the night before. It's very social." Despite the financial burden of overstaffing, reporters didn't investigate the millions that could be saved from personnel cuts.
