Remember Bulgegate? In the waning days of the election, Salon reported a JPL scientist's photographic analysis that made the very strong case that the bulge caught on tape under Dubya's jacket was, indeed, a communications device and that the Bush camp had cheated in every single debate with John Kerry. Writing in FAIR's Extra, David Lindorff (one of Salon's bulge reporters) gives us the backstory ("The Emperor's New Bulge"): turns out the New York Times had the photographic analysis first—had pursued the story aggressively, and then at the last minute spiked it. This one's a must-read. [Thanks to Suburban Guerilla for the link.]

Of particular interest here is the after-the-fact role of the Times' so-called public editor, Dan "See No Evil" Okrent. Knowing the FAIR piece would be going to press, Okrent preemptively posted a CYA item on the Bulgegate controversy on his website (and NOT in his column, where the Times readership might actually see it):

I checked into Lindorff’s assertion [that the bulge story had been spiked], and he’s right. The story’s life at the Times began with a tip from the NASA scientist, Robert Nelson, to reporter Bill Broad. Soon his colleagues on the science desk, John Schwartz and Andrew Revkin, took on the bulk of the reporting. Science editor Laura Chang presented the story at the daily news meeting but, like many other stories, it did not make the cut. [Nothing to see here—ed.] According to executive editor Bill Keller, "In the end, nobody, including the scientist who brought it up, could take the story beyond speculation. In the crush of election-finale stories, it died a quiet, unlamented death."

So the story was merely speculative, and on that basis couldn't make the cut? Ben Bagdikian, quoted in Lindorff's piece, has a few choice words on that topic: but let's note some direct evidence, a couple of emails written late in the game to Dr. Robert Nelson, the JPL analyst, by one of the Times reporters assigned to the investigation:

Hey there, Dr. Nelson—this story is shaping up very nicely, but my editors have asked me to hold off for one day while they push through a few other stories that are ahead of us in line. I might be calling you again for more information, but I hope that you’ll hold tight and not tell anyone else about this until we get a chance to get our story out there. [Oct. 26]

Subject: Re: reanalysis of debate images more convincing than before
Dear Dr. Nelson,
Thanks for sticking with me on this. I don’t know what might convince them—and the bar is raised higher the closer we are to the election, because they don’t want to seem to be springing something at the last moment—but I will bring this up with my bosses. [not dated in the piece; presumably post-spike]

Does this sound to you like the story was never a serious contender—or that its "speculative" character is what motivated the editors to kill it?

Alright, so Okrent's helping Bill Keller to smooth over (not without a dose of snide condescension—"unlamented death," indeed) one more flagrant episode of editorial cowardice. Merely a venial sin, on Dan's part. Never fear, though: it's not far to go to witness Okrent's essential thuggishness. Here's what transpired before Danny posted that dismissive Web notice: After a Times journalist told Lindorff, contradicting other statements, that the paper had indeed put significant work into the bulge story,

efforts to learn more about the history and fate of this story at the New York Times met for weeks with official silence. Several inquiries were made by phone and email to Times public editor Daniel Okrent over a period of three weeks, eliciting one response—an email from his assistant asking for the names of Extra!’s sources at the Times. He was not provided with the sources, but was given the names of the three reporters who worked on the piece, which had been disclosed by Dr. Nelson. (At deadline time, Okrent did finally call, and promised to seek the answer to the story’s fate. A week later, at press time, he had yet to do so.)

He tried to get Lindorff to betray his Times source. That, until publication loomed, was the "public editor's" sole response to the investigation. Don't tell me the Times didn't know what they were buying when they tapped Okrent for his job. This, I think, has to go down as the proudest, most upstanding moment in all of Dan Okrent's proud tenure. Forget integrity: how does a journalist even consider asking another journalist to do something like this? Does Dan Okrent have the self-respect god gave a lanced boil?

It's official: the Times under Bill Keller's editorship is irredeemably corrupt. I'm about this close to cancelling my fifteen-year subscription.

posted by michael  7:22:58 PM  
tell me about it []  

 

Weak framing. If I have relatively little to say in this space about Social Security privatization, it's not because I'm uninterested in the topic, God knows, which promises to be the defining domestic policy struggle of the new century: but because the barricades are already being so ably manned by the well-informed likes of Atrios, Josh Marshall and Max Sawicky, and most of my understanding of the topic is derived from them anyway. (And on the Times front, eRobin at Fact-esque is keeping a weather eye on the paper's rhetorical conformance, or non-conformance, with the BushCo privatization playbook.)

But one thing stuck out at me in yesterday's post-SOTU analysis from David Rosenbaum and Robin Toner ("Introducing Private Investments to the Safety Net"), and since I haven't seen much comment on this particular aspect of the topic, I thought I'd step in:

The theory behind the [phase-out] proposal is that the government can make the Social Security system financially solid by reducing guaranteed retirement benefits, but ideally workers' retirement income would not be lower because their investment accounts would make up for the lower guaranteed benefits. [Ideally? Rosenbaum and Toner really ought to have availed themselves of the handy benefits chart reprinted at Eschaton—they'd have realized that there's no "ideally" shoring up benefits anywhere in sight, not even in the plan's own benefit schedule—ed.]

Workers could participate or not, as they chose. Those who did might fare better financially than those who relied on guaranteed benefits. Though Mr. Bush did not acknowledge any risk, they could also do worse. Bush administration officials say the accounts would be heavily regulated, but even so, the unpredictability of the financial markets would be injected into what has always been a straightforward social insurance program.

The political struggle over the proposal will revolve around those risks.

This is a telling example of what I'd call weak framing. [And I want to call it also a tendentious misstatement of the terms of debate: how much of the ferocious blast of anti-privatization analysis and commentary has been devoted to talking about risk, anyway? Yet it was possible to detect a drift toward "risk" talk in the Democratic Congressional response to the SOTU, for instance when Harry Reid labelled the plan "dangerous," so this needs to be taken seriously.] In fact, it was weak framing when Al Gore tried it in 2000 with the "risky scheme" mantra—a look at the gloating right-wing response suggests just how weak, and how tone-deaf the "risk" formula was, and would be again this time.

"Risk," in the entrepreneurial frame, correlates with "reward": both are properties of investments. Social Security is not an investment program, it is social insurance; and to harp on "risk"—even though the Bush proposal does, indeed, place the retirements of almost all working people at risk—is to engage a frame that obscures that fact, and plays into Republican hands. Emphasize risk, and you (as an opponent) assign yourself the risk-averse position in the entrepreneurial frame—you become the everlasting caricature weak Democrat, forever seeking refuge against the stormy, value-creating free market of capitalist legend.

Pair up Rosenbaum and Toner's piece with yesterday's other A1 analysis, Todd Purdum's sycophantic tribute to the Big Bold Boldalicious Boldness of our Bold Leader's privatization scheme: and you see just how instinctively the press works to wrap the "craven Democrat/bold Republican" narrative around the kind of test of will that the Social Security fight amounts to. It's crucial that we avoid the weak-framing trap; we can't lose the rhetorical battle and expect to win a future for the great progressive legacy of social insurance.

Addendum: Of course, if you are going to talk about risk, you could do worse than to take Digby's line.

posted by michael  2:17:47 PM  
tell me about it []