MediaWatch: October 1991
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: October 1991
- Censoring the Case for "Censorship"
- Study Bites
- NewsBites: Mad Moldavians
- Revolving Door: Advocating Adams
- Networks Ignore Two Congressional Embarassments
- More Statistical Games
- Moyers' Boy Alter
- Janet Cooke Award: CBS: Threlked Flunks Economics
Janet Cooke Award: CBS: Threlked Flunks Economics
Every fall, the Census Bureau releases an enormous report on wealth and poverty in America. For the last decade, the Census figures have shown an encouraging increase in wealth for all income levels. But when the bureau released this year's poverty rate report on September 26 the news was bad, so it led the CBS Evening News. (For the past three years, CBS didn't once report the Census figures before story number 11.) For exaggerating bad news through statistical manipulation and unrefutably false claims, CBS once again wins the Janet Cooke Award.
The Census Bureau reported an increase in the poverty rate from 12.8 to 13.5 percent as the number of people defined as poor rose to 33 million. Reporter Richard Threlkeld began with a flourish: "The Census figures confirm what's so evident throughout America in this recession. There are more poor people now than ever."
Wrong. "That's moronic," Heritage Foundation analyst Robert Rector told MediaWatch, pointing out that by the Census Bureau's count, the number of poor people stood at 48.4 million in 1950, 39.5 million in 1959, 36 million in 1964 before the "War on Poverty," and 35 million in 1983, the height of a recession. At the end of World War II, a third of Americans lived in poverty.
MediaWatch was unable to reach Threlkeld at CBS, but when asked about the source of Threlkeld's claim, a CBS Evening News producer suggested: "If you pick up The New York Times, you can probably get the whole text of the report." In fact, the September 27 Times published a graph showing the higher 1983 poverty number.
When presented with Threlkeld's error, the CBS producer treated the story as if it was already ancient history: "Old things like that, you're not going to go back and make some sort of correction for a story we did two weeks ago that said this, well this is not the fact. That's just not going to happen....I'm sure he's correct based on some interpretation. He's not around, you're not going to find out, and I'm not going to call you back."
Threlkeld's report only briefly explained the Census Bureau's definition of poverty, which excludes assets and government benefits. On CNN's PrimeNews the same night, reporter Deborah Potter offered a more complete look at the figures. She interviewed Kate O'Beirne of the Heritage Foundation, and gave a thorough, balanced explanation of the Census Bureau's definition: "The Census Bureau doesn't count government benefits like food stamps or assets like homes and cars when calculating income. If it did, the poverty rate might be considerably lower. But the report didn't include homeless people either, which would add to the poverty rate."
Threlkeld made no attempt to explain the long-standing debate over the Census definition of poverty, and only aired a soundbite of Robert Greenstein of the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, who Potter also interviewed. Neither reporter explained how Census figures show that the poor actually spend $1.94 for every $1 the Census counts as income, meaning those in poverty have more money than the Census figures indicate.
Reagamnesia. Threlkeld maintained: "It's not just the poor who've been hurt by this recession. It's most of the rest of us. Income per person fell $428 from 1989 to 1990, the first time that's gone down in eight years." Threlkeld also mentioned that the number of poor increased for the first time in eight years. But while the media hold Ronald Reagan responsible for any negative 1980s economic legacies, Threlkeld did not suggest the possibility that the Bush Administration's departure from Reaganomics caused the slowdown which drove the new increase in poverty. The largest decline in median family income on record came in 1980, the last year of Jimmy Carter, when income dropped a whopping $1,916.
The Rich. Threlkeld continued: "And over the last 20 years, the rich have been getting richer at the expense of the middle class: three percent more of the nation's income for the wealthiest 20 percent, three percent less for the 60 percent of Americans in the middle."
Very clever. First, what Threlkeld didn't report: The Census found the rich actually lost income last year. The top fifth lost 5 percent from 1989 to 1990, while the bottom fifth lost 1 percent. The share of income claimed by the top fifth also declined last year, while the bottom fifth's share has stayed the same for five years in a row.
Second, the rich didn't gain "at the expense of" the middle class. Census data shows that the 60 percent in the middle also grew in wealth over the last twenty years. The economy isn't a caricature of static analysis where the omnipotent President took three percent from the middle class and gave it to the rich. In fact, the mobility of households between high and low incomes is dramatic. In response to the Census figures, Chris Frenze, a minority staff economist with the Joint Economic Committee, pointed out the effects of social mobility: "In just one year, about one third of Americans move to a different quintile; over the same time, about one quarter of those in the top quintile fall to lower quintiles."
Safety Net. After Threlkeld's report, Dan Rather asked "What are the real consequences of this?" Threlkeld responded: "For one thing, I think an increased strain on state and local government resources, already strapped as you know, and it will be harder for the poor to get help. The social safety net is the weakest it's been for any recession in the last 40 years."
Wrong. Spending on the entitlement programs that compose the safety net has increased throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. According to Rector, a composite of 75 federal means-tested programs (including state and local spending) has increased from $126 billion in 1975 to $184 billion in 1988 in constant 1988 dollars.
As MediaWatch has found before, some network reporting on social problems has not only been emotionally loaded and politically slanted, but statistically misleading or just plain wrong. Dan Rather introduced Threlkeld's report with the assurance: "These are unpleasant facts. They are facts." Could it be that CBS, like the boy who cried wolf, is having trouble getting people to believe its economic reports?
