Like the global war on terror/long war/overseas contingency operations [PDF warning], news that the corporate media is 'at war' with the concept of social insurance spending isn't exactly breaking. This has been going on for years.
But the recent Associated Press article discussing the budget deficit is quite illustrative of how skewed the language and framing employed by the corporate media has become in order to obfuscate, hide, and distract from the massive amount of corporate welfare bloating our budget. It's not even overtly intentional anymore; it's just how they think.
I'll link to Yahoo! Finance's posting of the story by AP writers Martin Crutsinger and Andrew Taylor.
Here's how the title puts it:
Government reports $1.3 trillion budget deficit
Government reports $1.3 trillion budget deficit, 2nd largest ever
While mildly sensational, that's more or less factual. They round to the nearest tenth of a trillion, which makes it a little larger, and they talk about it being the '2nd largest' without noting that this comes in under expectations, but all in all, not a terrible headline. The headline could have been 'Democrats shrink 2010 budget deficit by over $100 billion', but we all know that's not gonna happen.
What gets fascinating is how they start the story then, based upon this headline.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration said Friday the federal deficit hit a near-record $1.3 trillion for the just-completed budget year.
That means the government had to borrow 37 cents out of every dollar it spent as tax revenues continued to lag while spending on food stamps and unemployment benefits went up as joblessness neared double-digit levels in a struggling economy.
It is amazing how ingrained this kind of framework has become. Here is a nationally syndicated news service discussing a $1.3 trillion budget deficit whose first two paragraphs name but two programs: unemployment insurance and supplemental nutrition assistance (food stamps).
Nevermind the spending that 'went up' due to these programs over the past year, guess how the total cost of food stamps impacted AP's headline number?
It didn't.
That's right, when rounding to the nearest tenth of a trillion dollars, financing 37 cents on the dollar of the budget - AP's own number - for food stamps via deficit spending amounts to $0.0 trillion dollars. Now, AP could have rounded to the nearest hundredth of a trillion instead. That would have made their headline number less exciting, though, which is probably why they chose to round up to $1.3 trillion. $1.29 trillion isn't quite as sexy; after all, that's why Apple charges $1.29 on iTunes, not $1.30. But at least then, food stamps wouldn't have been a rounding error.
It would comprise a massive, above-the-fold value of, get this: $0.03 trillion.
Now, unemployment spending in absolute terms is about three times as high as food stamp spending, so that's enough for unemployment insurance to amount to more than a rounding error. How much more?
Well, $0.1 trillion. And that's not even considering the fact that some unemployment insurance spending is funded by taxes levied explicitly to cover unemployment insurance spending.
I'm going to wager a bet, though, that this particular bit of analysis isn't some mass conspiracy on the part of the media. What is much more likely is that the authors never actually read the document from the Treasury Department [PDF warning]. They took a headline number, then they plugged in wording about safety net spending because it's Conventional Wisdom that safety net spending is what's expensive.
Government handouts (to poor people) are causing us to go broke...because we say so. See how easy that logic is? No actual work necessary for the authors. Just copy and paste.
There's much more to explore in an article like this, but for the sake of brevity, let's stop with just the headline and introductory paragraphs. That's more than enough to make you wonder what sort of value exactly is being offered here. I'm some random guy who can read a PDF, and I can find out more useful information. As an aside, it's drivel like this that has driven so many people to abandon the corporate media. The problem isn't outright lying; the headline and lede of the article are essentially technically accurate.
The problem, instead, is the context. What's not discussed is the story. If you want to look at programs driving the budget deficit at a big picture level over the past year, you have to look, essentially, at three things:
- defense/security/intelligence/military spending
- tax breaks (ie, legal tax reductions)
- tax fraud (ie, illegal tax reductions)
The are lots of very exciting avenues of exploration related to these subjects. The complete absence of discussion of these immediately calls into question the credibility of the authors and/or the role of the editors.
Asking whether a news organization is stupid or corrupt ain't exactly a good choice for 'em. But it's stories like this that make the question unavoidable. Even as the article bounces around in print and online through thousands of outlets big and small receiving AP feeds. It's like the media companies are trying to become obsolete!
Crossposted at The Seminal at FDL.