Category Archives: Washington Post bias

A conservative American President in Poland

Posted on by

President Trump said,

Our soldiers still serve together today in Afghanistan and Iraq, combating the enemies of all civilization.

…I am here today not just to visit an old ally, but to hold it up as an example for others who seek freedom and who wish to summon the courage and the will to defend our civilization.

…The people of Poland, the people of America, and the people of Europe still cry out “We want God.”

…We are fighting hard against radical Islamic terrorism, and we will prevail. We cannot accept those who reject our values and who use hatred to justify violence against the innocent.

…The West became great not because of paperwork and regulations but because people were allowed to chase their dreams and pursue their destinies.

Americans, Poles, and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty. We must work together to confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are.

…The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?

Thanks to a reader for pointing out how much this speech uses the language of civilization vs. barbarism. Predictably, the speech will thrill a conservative. My guess is that it will do little for libertarians and nothing for progressives.

In fact, the WaPo reliably has a front-page newsitorial that begins

President Trump brought a starkly populist and nationalistic message to Europe on Thursday, characterizing Western civilization as under siege and putting the United States on a potential collision course with European and Asian powers that embrace a more cooperative approach to the world.

In contrast, the WSJ story leads with

In a bid to broaden the nationalist vision he has long embraced, President Donald Trump on Thursday described the West as locked in a struggle it could lose unless it can “summon the courage” to see it through.

The WSJ lead is neither pro-Trump nor anti-Trump. The WaPo has to describe Trump as putting the U.S. on a “potential collision course” with allies. As is often the case in the WaPo these days, the lead editorial is less biased and hostile than the lead “news” story.

After more than 35 years, I have decided to end my subscription to the WaPo and get the WSJ instead. I certainly will continue to pay attention to progressive narratives and ideas. But my wife and I decided that it feels wrong to reward the WaPo for its unrelenting front-page bias. It is no longer a newspaper.

Facts, Feelings, and Filters

Posted on by

A commenter writes,

Arnold’s argument that economics is about using particular frameworks as lenses for interpretation is also quite postmodern.

Well, sort of.

Consider three statements.

a) Amazon announced its intention to purchase Whole Foods.

b) Amazon should not be allowed to purchase Whole Foods.

c) Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods damages the prospects of other grocers.

(a) is an example of a fact. (b) is an example of a feeling.

(c) is an example of an observation based on a filter, in that it depends on one’s framework of interpretation. You might think one way if you see Amazon’s move as intensifying competition in the grocery industry. You might think differently if you see it reducing competition and/or as a signal that there is value in national grocery franchises (what if Google or Facebook decide they also want to own grocery stores?). And, yes, the drop in stock prices for other large grocery chains says that investors favor one interpretation more than another. But my point is that the interpretation is contestable.

Some more remarks.

1. In 20th-century philosophy, the Logical Positivists seemed to dismiss the concept of filters. They would regard (c) as an attempted fact-claim. Anything other than a fact-claim or a feeling is a dogma.

2. The Post-modernists take the opposite view. Every statement comes through a filter. This would make every statement contestable, including (a).

3. I wish to take an intermediate position. I believe that there are scientific observations and laws that are not contestable, but I also believe that filters are very important. Synonyms for filters include frameworks of interpretation, models, theories, and paradigms.

4. In Specialization and Trade, I argue against the dominant filter in macroeconomics, which I call the GDP factory.

5. In The Three Languages of Politics, I argue that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians each use distinctive linguistic filters. If you make an argument using terms that correspond to (for example) the progressive’s linguistic filter, a progressive will approve that argument, while it will fail to resonate with a conservative or libertarian.

6. In both books, I am suggesting that people think they see truth, but there are different plausible filters that would change their outlook.

7. However, I do not go so far as to say that there is no truth, and that any belief system is as good as any other. Instead, I am saying that sometimes there is more than one plausible filter. If you are sending a man to the moon or building a computer, you had better use the consensus scientific filters. In other realms, where causal density is high, no filter is robust.

8. If you want to be wise, you need to acknowledge the anomalies that cast doubt on your filters. Otherwise, you end up treating your filter as a sacred tribal doctrine.

9. There is a prominent version of post-modernism that I would term Left Post-modernism. Strictly speaking, post-modernism should lead one to be aware of many possible filters and skeptical of one’s own filters. In contrast, Left Post-modernism puts everything through the filter of race and gender and is entirely lacking in self-doubt. For example, in Sunday’s WaPo, Tung Yin writes,

Mass killings look the most like terrorism when their perpetrators seem the most alien from the Judeo-Christian, white majority.

This is Left Post-modernism treating its filter as a sacred tribal doctrine, ignoring some pretty obvious contrary evidence. Just off the top of my head, the Irish Republican Army and the Baader-Meinhof gang were labeled terrorists.

The WaPo itself has an analysis on line (not in print, that I could see) of Friday’s terrorist stabbing in Jerusalem, which is focused on “who they were working with and for.” That is one distinctive feature of terrorism, which is that the perpetrators claim to act on behalf of an organization that engages in terrorism. But far be it from Yin to admit that the term “terrorism” is anything other than a racist epithet.

Speaking of Friday’s attack, in which an Israeli policewoman was stabbed to death before the attackers were killed, The BBC notoriously headlined the incident “Three Palestinians killed after deadly stabbing in Jerusalem.” This is how they prefer to filter such news (although in this rare instance, following Israeli outrage the BBC later changed the headline). The WaPo filtered the news even more effectively, because I did not see any coverage of the incident at all in its print editions. It might otherwise disturb the narrative that the WaPo put forth prominently in recent Sunday editions, in which the Palestinians suffer from checkpoints for no reason under “occupation.”

The WaPo news and Outlook sections are now all Left Post-modernism, all the time. The editorial page is sometimes more broad-minded, but I have given up on the heavy-handed filtering disguised as reporting and analysis. For news, I look elsewhere.

Classic WaPo Front Page Editorial

Posted on by

On a proposed cut in the corporate income tax.

President Trump is pursuing a drastic cut in the corporate tax rate, a move that is likely to grow the national debt and breach a long-held Republican goal of curbing federal borrowing.

That is the main theme of the story. This would be fine with me if the Post were always so fastidious about editorializing about the deficit effect of policies. For example, they could report Mr. Trump’s budget cuts as moves that are likely to shrink the debt and help curb federal borrowing. Or they could describe Democrats’ spending proposals as likely to grow the national debt.

Or they could not do any front-page editorializing and instead use the opinion page to express their concerns.

The irony of this is that for people like me, this shifts the focus away from President Trump’s flaws and keeps the attention on the Post’s flaws. The less even-handed they are, the more sympathy I have for Mr. Trump. Of course, their more typical Trump-hating readers are thrilled to see them attack President Trump at every opportunity.

Related:

Jack Shafer and Tucker Doherty write,

The national media really does work in a bubble, something that wasn’t true as recently as 2008. And the bubble is growing more extreme. Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political. If you’re a working journalist, odds aren’t just that you work in a pro-Clinton county—odds are that you reside in one of the nation’s most pro-Clinton counties. And you’ve got company: If you’re a typical reader of Politico, chances are you’re a citizen of bubbleville, too.

I recommend the entire essay.

Some Pro-Trump Intellectuals

Posted on by

Joshua Mitchell writes,

What binds globalism and identity politics together is the judgment that national sovereignty is not the final word on how to order collective life. This judgment against national sovereignty—let us state the matter boldly—was the animating principle of the post-1989 world order, an order that is now collapsing before our eyes. Citizens who came of age after 1989 scarcely know how daring this project has been and, thanks to the American university, can scarcely conceive of any alternative to it. The post-1989 world order, however, is not fixed and immutable. It is, moreover, a rather bold historical experiment.

These are from a new journal called American Affairs. Pointer from Tyler Cowen. I will put some more quotes, from this and other articles, below the fold.

A few random thoughts from me:

1. What is Michael Lind doing on the masthead? I do not think of him as a natural Trump supporter. Of course, the mission statement for the journal does not say anything about Mr. Trump. It says, for example

We seek to provide a forum for the discussion of new policies that are outside of the conventional dogmas, and a platform for new voices distinguished by originality, experience, and achievement rather than the compromised credentials of careerist institutions.

2. We have National Affairs (Yuval Levin’s journal) and now American Affairs. What’s next? Playoffs? A college draft?

3. I find it easier to be anti-anti-Trump than to be pro-Trump. Left-wing campus activism repels me. The Democratic Party’s identity politics repels me. The outrage-manufacturing machine that is the Washington Post front page repels me. The arrogance of those in power regarding ordinary citizens repels me, although I do not think that American’s citizenry is blameless when it comes to the health care mess, for example.

4. I think that most of the policy ideas to help working-class Americans that are floating around these days are beside the point. I feel that way about trade restriction, immigration restriction, minimum wage increases, support for unions, education–pretty much every hobby horse, left and right.

I think that deregulation could make a positive difference, although the difference might be small. That is an area where there is some alignment between President Trump’s agenda and the needs of working-class Americans.

However, if it were up to me, I would focus on reducing the implicit taxes on labor demand and labor supply.

a. Get rid of “employer-provided” health insurance, which is an employment tax on healthy workers to pay for health care costs of workers with chronic illnesses, and instead provide support for the chronically ill with government funds. On health care policy in general, I continue to prefer the approaches that I suggested a decade ago in Crisis of Abundance to the Obamacare and ObamacareLite choices currently in play.

b. Reduce or eliminate the payroll tax.

c. Substitute a basic income grant for means-tested programs, including food stamps and Medicaid. However, reduce overall spending on poverty programs. That probably means setting the BIG below the level required to sustain a household. Leave it to charities and local governments to find the households that need and deserve more assistance than a low BIG can provide.

d. Fund (a) and (b) with a tax on consumer spending.

5. On foreign policy, if Trumpism means nothing more and nothing less than treating governments that work with us better than governments that work against us, then I am on board.

Continue reading →

Charles Murray at Middlebury

Posted on by

The coverage in the Washington Post and in the New York Times was meager, with no follow-up op-eds.

The Times story, to its credit, says in the lead paragraph that it was “an encounter that turned violent and left one faculty member injured.” The Post story, which was buried deep in the paper (or maybe only appeared on line?) waits until the 6th paragraph to say that it “felt like it was edging frighteningly close to violence.”

On the other hand, the Times very early in the story quotes the Southern Poverty Law Center accusing the Murray of being a “white nationalist.” That is an irresponsible allegation coming from an unreliable source.

My thoughts:

1. In the view of conservatives, this is a very important story. I am pretty sure that a staff of reporters and editors that was more ideologically balanced would have given the story more prominence.

2. In terms of the three-axes model, this story feeds the worst fears of conservatives, which is that in the struggle between civilization and barbarism, progressives are on the wrong side.

3. Megan McArdle writes,

when it comes to physical violence, however noble the cause, that’s assault, not speech, and the perpetrators should be arrested.

The problem is that college administrators do not think in those terms. If you think that a college is capable of punishing violent demonstrators, you will be disappointed. For the most part, college administrators believe in hand-wringing and therapy, as opposed to punishment.

If I were in charge at a college, I would have real police at the event, and I would announce that protestors would be given five minutes to peacefully yell whatever they want. Following that, disturbing the peace will be dealt with by the authorities.

But that approach is about as alien to today’s college administrator as a visitor from Mars.

4. This incident will greatly reduce the likelihood of conservative speakers being invited to college campuses. Administrations do now want to risk being embarrassed by radical protests, and the best way to avoid that risk is to avoid having prominent conservative speakers. I may not be quite so prominent, and I only get one or two invitations a year, but my guess is that I have received my last invitation.

5. College politics can provide a prelude to national politics. Gender identity was a big issue on campus before it flared up on the national scene. The anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party today looks a lot like the anti-Israel movement that emerged on college campuses several years ago. If conservatives are treated as unacceptable and violence against them becomes the norm on colleges, then there is a risk that this will spread well beyond the campus.

6. Late in 2015, I started to write a novel in which a left-wing movement became increasingly violent. I shelved it, because I did not have experience writing fiction (not even short stories), and I was making things too complex for a rookie writer. Also, only one person to whom I showed a draft gave me any encouragement. Still, many of the sorts of left-fascist rationalizations and behaviors that I was going to speculate on in the novel have become more manifest in the past year.

7. All that said, there is a non-zero chance that the Murray incident was isolated, and that it has no larger significance. I hope it turns out that way.

WaPo Watch

Posted on by

Fred Hiatt writes,

The answer to dishonest or partisan journalism cannot be more partisan journalism, which would only harm our credibility and make civil discourse even less possible. The response to administration insults cannot be to remake ourselves in the mold of their accusations.

…So far, I believe The Post has been setting the standard in this difficult job. It is not boasting for me to say so, because as editorial page editor I have no input in The Post’s news coverage. I am only a reader, like all of you.

Of course, I disagree the the Post has been setting a standard. And in fact, as of now, the Post’s web site is telling readers that the shooting at a Mosque in Quebec is a Trump-inspired hate crime.

the context of the attack was inescapable, coming after a rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric, behavior and vandalism in the United States and Canada, amid a heated debate about President Trump’s executive order temporarily shutting U.S. borders to refugees and migrants from seven mostly Muslim countries.

It could turn out that the shooters were inspired by Trump. I have no idea. But I think that this way of framing the story is at best premature. And if it turns out to be wrong, it is irresponsible. Just stick to the facts, and spare us the “context.”

UPDATE: Unlike the Post story, which mentions Trump several times, the Globe and Mail account, which includes more facts and only facts, does not mention his name once.

UPDATE 2: Currently, the suspect is described in other media as anti-immigrant. If it holds up, it goes a long way toward exonerating the Post.

Martin Gurri on the Current Media Environment

Posted on by

He writes,

Democratic institutions, as currently structured, require a semi-monopoly over political information. To organize the application of power, democratic governments, parties, and politicians must retain some control over the story told about them by the public. The elite fixation with “fake news,” like the demand that Trump drop out of Twitter, are both a function of the fact that institutional politics live and die by gatekeeping.

Read the entire post. I am skipping the WaPo watch this week–busy with other things. But one way to interpret the WaPo’s behavior is that it is reacting to its loss of gatekeeper function by trying to exert even more control over the narrative. Neither Gurri nor I think that it is likely to succeed.

WaPo Watch, Week 5

Posted on by

On Tuesday, they used a news story on the Japanese Prime Minister’s visit to Pearl Harbor to remind readers that Donald Trump is going to be dangerous and divisive in the world.

Not in the WaPo, but in the Washington Times, Newt Gingrich wrote,

Unfortunately, The New York Times is trapped within the obsolete establishment mindset which was wrong about Trump throughout the primaries, then was wrong about Trump throughout the general election, then was wrong about who would win. This elite mindset has learned nothing. It is now enthusiastically being wrong about the transition. All of this is great practice for the paper to be wrong about the new administration.

You would think that at some point the NYT and the Wapo would want to write stories about what Mr. Trump is attempting to accomplish and how he is attempting to accomplish it. It is certainly important to write stories about his flaws, but by limiting themselves to that, the papers are giving their readers a very stunted understanding of their world.

WaPo Watch, Week 4

Posted on by

I was away most of last week, so I did not see much of the actual newspaper. Two stories stood out in my mind.

First, there was a story claiming that Trump’s Cabinet choices were selected in part on the basis of how they look on television.

First off, consider the double standard. Did the Post go back to previous Presidents and find officials whose looks were off-putting? Who were the bad-looking people that President Obama appointed to top spots in his Administration?

A much more interesting and balanced take on the Trump team comes from Ray Dalio (pointer from Tyler Cowen.) An excerpt:

the people he chose are bold and hell-bent on playing hardball to make big changes happen in economics and in foreign policy (as well as other areas such as education, environmental policies, etc.). They also have different temperaments and different views that will have to be resolved.

I think this is much more important than their looks. Note that President Obama’s most important domestic initiative, the Affordable Care Act, was overseen by Kathleen Sebelius, a career politician who clearly was not appointed for her management skills. She was nominally in charge of the infamous Obamacare web site.

The second story that struck me was the one about the Obama Administration’s decision to abstain on the UN Security Council resolution that caused an outcry in Israel. What struck me was that the lead story was completely free of editorializing, even though the Post‘s editorial page decried the decision. This made me want to go back and give more bias points to the story that the Post wrote about Mr. Trump’s phone call with the President of Taiwan. There, the editorializing dominated the front page.

WaPo Watch, Week 3

Posted on by

I am going to dial back the extent of this. I keep hoping that someone will contact me saying that they will take it on if we can find funding for it, but nobody has.

Tuesday’s paper included a front-page story about Planned Parenthood which begins

Planned Parenthood officials are scrambling to prepare for the likelihood that Congress next year will cut off more than a half-billion dollars in federal funding to the group, fulfilling the wishes of abortion foes who are planning an aggressive push to roll back abortion rights under President-elect Donald Trump.

The headline is “Planned Parenthood ready for abortion war.” That sounds like a fund-raising appeal for Planned Parenthood, and I am sure that the group was very happy to see the story on the front page. But it is not news.

The newspaper had the Russian hack story on the front page every day except Friday and Sunday, but with nothing new to report. This seems to be the story around which Democrats who want to re-litigate the election are coalescing. But I do not see where they are headed. Citizens who cast ballots for Trump are not raising their hands to say they want to change their votes. Congress cannot impeach Putin. Even if Trump were to be impeached and removed from office, all the people next in line are Republicans.

If the Russian hacking story does not pan out as another Watergate, what do you think that the Post will do? (a) eat humble pie; or (b) keep trying to promote other scandals, trying to find The Big One that brings Trump down?

Through Thursday, the paper continued to attack Trump’s cabinet picks in news stories, especially on page one. They are (gasp!) businessmen. They are too friendly to energy producers. And they got their world view from Ayn Rand. For the Post and its sympathetic readers, the incoming Administration is just one outrage after another. However, Friday there was nothing either on the Russian hacking story or the Trump cabinet. (There was a fair story on the appointment of an ambassador to Israel who has supported settlements.)

They Post continued to run op-eds (by E. J. Dionne, for example) asking the electoral college to reverse the election result. No one who favors this seems to want to talk about what the response might be from the other side, either in the short run or in the long run.

On Sunday, the attempt to overturn the election in the Electoral College received lead-story front-page coverage. The story jumps to page 18, where there is another analysis, by Aaron Blake, that finally speaks to what might happen if Trump were not chosen.

But the fact remains that the electoral college, if it were to deprive Trump of the presidency, would risk massive public backlash and a potential constitutional crisis. It would also be doing something even many non-Trump voters aren’t comfortable with.

My guess is that if it were Republicans trying to overturn an election this way, we would be hearing a lot more about the adverse consequences. In addition, we would be reading about the nuttiness of the people behind the attempt.

And if Hillary Clinton has expressed an opinion about whether she wants this effort to take place or not, I have not seen it. That seems odd.