AP “Speculating” About Budget Delay Instead of Checking the History
Tom Raum offers up a provocative AP story about the fact that we won’t be getting a Mid-Session Review on the budget from OMB for a little while yet:
The release of the update — usually scheduled for mid-July — has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town on its August 7 summer recess.
Now it’s true that this “usually” happens in mid-July. But it’s also “usually” the case that the President in any given July is the same President you had the previous July. In transition years, it’s normal for the budget process to be pushed back in time. The 1993 budget review came out at the end of August and the 2001 budget review came out on August 22. There’s no conspiracy here.
Meanwhile, note the annoying tendency of important media actors to “go meta” rather than acknowledging their own role in the process. Tom Raum of the Associated Press is doing the speculating here. But instead of admitting that that’s what he’s doing, thus creating a situation in which I can say “Tom Raum speculates such-and-such but he’s wrong,” Raum is pretending to be reporting on the existence of speculation that has nothing to with his own article. In the current version of the story, graf twenty-two finally gives us “[t]hey blame the delay on the fact that this is a transition year between presidencies” with no acknowledgement that Obama’s schedule is, in fact, identical to the schedules involved in the past two transition years.
19 Responses to “AP “Speculating” About Budget Delay Instead of Checking the History”
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July 20th, 2009 at 11:03 am
You’re treating this as though there were some element (however inaccurate) of actual journalism involved. In fact Fournier has turned the AP into a straight-up Republican propaganda organ, just like Faux News.
July 20th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I teach Freshman comp at Rutgers, and my students do this all the damn time – they put their theses inside a formulation like “some have argued” because they’re afraid to take responsibility for their own ideas. This is understandable, as they are all writing their first college papers. Someone like Tom Raum has no such excuse.
July 20th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Doubtful that Raum was musing about the supposed lateness of that report all by his lonesome. More likely, the point was pitched to him by some Republican flack. But it wouldn’t have had the same zing if it were prefaced by “Republican sources argue…”.
July 20th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Clearly this is now AP’s SOP — they know what they want to hear and roam around asking people to say it to them. Last week, the source for their $1.5 trillion figure was obviously a staffer from one of the Blue Dogs. I enjoyed watching them go back and finding some non-told-to-me-in-an-elevator basis for that nugget.
July 20th, 2009 at 11:35 am
when it’s the “journalist” doing the speculating, rather than reporting this as if it were speculation by some unnamed third parties that the “journalist” is passing along, the correct usage is for the “journalist” to introduce the personal speculation with “I betcha…”
July 20th, 2009 at 11:42 am
yeah, or at least “one might suppose”, so that the journo isn’t fudging on whether he actually heard such speculation from an objective, independent source.
Get used to this, though: what with newsroom budgets being slashed with no reprieve in sight, expect the investigative legwork to be done increasingly by political partisans, and the reporter/editor’s job to devolve to basically sifting through partisan muckraking, and deciding what is fit to print.
July 20th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
So why are we taking AP seriously as a news outlet anymore? Or FOX for that matter?
What we need is a nice term to refer to this kind of media that portrays itself as news, but actually is producing misleading propoganda… Like ‘Faux News’, but more generic. Any ideas?
ex animo-
Jo
July 20th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Knee jerk libs having difficulty acknowledging that their man’s ship is sinking. Paleeeeease. All of a sudden the AP is right leaning?
If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s a DOA global warming and healthcare boondoggle.
Capisce?
July 20th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
All Propaganda?
July 20th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Jo @ 12:07
The tag for propaganda disguised as jouralism could be…main stream media.
Maybe you and Olbedork can decide for us.
July 20th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
True to form the shallow thinking hack Megan McArdle is making a big deal out of this.
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/07/waiting_for_the_mid-session_bu.php
Why Matt seems to still think she has anything of value to say is beyond me.
July 20th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
The 09 deficit was projected to be near $2 trillion when Bush was still in. The official number is still $1.84 trillion. The odd thing is we are not even close with 10 weeks to go. Last week all the stories said we just passed a trillion, with the obligatory but it will be near two trillion in the next sentence. Where is the missing deficit? Well there is the $68 billion in repaid TARP and the stimulus spending has been virtually non existent but after that I am not sure.
Next week the Treasury is set to borrow $140 billion and that’s a start. Still to reach the 1.84 will take some yeoman work of about $85 billion a week till Sept. 30th.
July 20th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
barac doesn’t want:
1. public to see how expensive his ratinal healthcare plan is.
2. how much he needs to borrow from red china to fund healthcare.
3. how many of his brothers he’ll put to work on rational healthcare working for his govt. note, these are the same folks that gave us fannie & freedie and the sub prime home mortgage debacle that cost most american up to half of their 401K’s.
4. he’s a lame duck president with no support from his own party. Hey look, the american people don’t embrace barac’s communism.
5. american government is broke. why shouldn’t the federal government downsize like the american people have to.
6. white women come back home and vote with your white fathers and brothers. you now if you have strayed to the liberal pro baby killing democrat track. you know that you are welcome to come back home. if you had kept your babies you would have become responsible and became a republican. You need to speak to God he will forgive you if your heart is sincere. You really don’t want your kids growing up in a barac style communist society do you. I mean he’ll pick your kids doctors, their jobs, their car to drive, their home, their place to leave. All freedom will be gone. Do you want your kids to live as a welfare recipient if you do then support barac.
July 20th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
[...] to be released a bit tardy. Greg Mankiw thinks this means Obama is skirting accountability. Matthew Yglesias counters: Now it’s true that this “usually” happens in mid-July. But it’s also “usually” the [...]
July 20th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Matt, you always have the most interesting commenters. For #13, I’m trying to decide whether or not the sentiments are genuine, but if they are, then I am quite convinced that the writer of point 6 is not a woman (though it is signed “Sarah”). Also, “ratinal”? How can someone possibly type that instead of “national”? Maybe he’s not using a QWERTY board.
July 21st, 2009 at 1:32 am
I thought it was supposed to be ‘rational’ or ‘retinal’. Neither of which make sense, but, well, neither does the rest of #13’s post.
July 21st, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Good thing this new prez is
the same asbetter than the last two.:rolleyes:
July 21st, 2009 at 1:01 pm
My boss has grown a small accounting firm into a regional firm based pretty much on one idea. He does not believe in Saly, Same As Last Year.
Obama ran on the same principle, change and accountability. So arguing that this is par for the course is a straw man, Obama wanted us to hold his presidency to a higher standard. He is not living up to the standard he set for his presidency.
Lastly, The reason for delaying the review is irrelevant. Either way, this report would add valuable information to the health care debate. Information that Obama campaigned on providing to us so we could make informed decisions and have honest debate. So take your pick, it’s either political gamesmanship or ineptitude of the kind that Obama once railed against, but either way it is a campaign promise broken.
July 22nd, 2009 at 4:55 am
I teach Freshman comp at Rutgers, and my students do this all the damn time – they put their theses inside a formulation like “some have argued” because they’re afraid to take responsibility for their own ideas. This is understandable, as they are all writing their first college papers. Someone like Tom Raum has no such excuse.
James Taranto of OpinionJournal says it thusly: “When it appears in a news story, the word ’some’ is a first-person pronoun.”