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Writers like me have a tendency to give the media a hearty round of applause every time they write a simple, factually accurate article like this one:
McCain claims in an ad released today that "Obama voted to raise taxes on people making just $42,000. He promises more taxes on small business, seniors, your life savings, your family."But when it comes to promises, it's worth pointing out that, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center's analysis of both candidates' proposed plans, Obama would cut taxes for those making in the range of $38,000 to $66,000 three to almost eight times more than McCain would.Ah, the soft bigotry of low expectations. What I can't figure out, though, is why this isn't as big a story as tire gauges, or "celebrity" ads? It would be no harder to call people like me up and get them to come on and talk about whether McCain's terribly regressive tax plan will hurt him in the election than it would be to call people like me up and get them to come on and talk about whether voters thought Obama's trip to the Middle East was presumptuous. You could fill airtime either way. Instead, the factual judgments with genuine applicability to governance are confined to occasional articles and media blogs while bullshit occupies almost every moment of actual airtime. And yet, if you asked someone at NBC why they don't do a better job reporting on what matters and separating fact from fiction, they'd point you to this article and, in a way, they'd be right, they did run this article. But what matters in the media isn't saying something, but repeating it. Quietly mentioning the truth is of no use if you spend most of your time abetting the lies and obscuring the product of your own reporting. Till this stuff is interwoven into the very fabric of NBC's coverage, its presence on "First Read" is good, but not sufficient.
