I find myself wondering to whom I can turn for factual coverage of the news. I subscribe to the New York Times on weekends, but even though the Times is reputed by conservatives to be a liberal journal, the paper's coverage of several things has waxed Republican lately, and if I hadn't known that the purported facts with regard to one issue and the soritical leap taken in another were erroneous, I might well have just accepted that what the Times was saying to me was the truth because that used to be something on which one could count. I've written to the Times about the factual error--the XL segment of the Keystone pipeline does not run from Canada to the Gulf Coast, it runs only from Hardisty, Alberta in Canada to Steele City in Nebraska, which route is already served by sections of the Keystone system--but they persist in reporting the canard that the XL is a new route to the refineries on our Gulf Coast. No wonder the American people are in favor of the thing; they don't know what it really is. And while I don't really feel terribly concerned about the XL itself, I am concerned that for various reasons, it may be just the nose of the camel inside our national tent, and I believe that if the facts were adequately reported somewhere other than on the internet (even Wikepedia seems more accurate than the Times on this point) there might be few more questions asked...even by Republicans.
But the worst aspect of the casual editing that seems to be de rigueur at the Times these days is that it distorts public opinion on all kinds of issues, and thus puts people in office who shouldn't be elected to anything. For example, there was an article in Sunday's Times about the Affordable Care Act that started off with the story of a woman who complained that the orthopedist that was in her insurer's network was too far away. She complained, "don't they realize that he is in another state?" And as it turned out he was, but he was only 14 miles away from her home. That's a twenty minute ride, regardless of whether you have to cross a state border. I drive that far to see my orthopedist, and it never seemed a hardship to me. But I didn't get my insurance through the state run ACA website whereas she apparently did, and of course, she had other complaints. For example, her new plan changed the amounts of deductibles and co-pays on her. Again, my plan did that too...well before the ACA was passed. Others quoted in the article complained about their doctors not participating in their plans, but that didn't start in 2010 either. I could go on, but I think the point is made: the fact that people have complaints about their health insurance companies is nothing new, and it has almost nothing to do with the ACA. Then there was the article about detention facilities on our southern border in which women and children are housed while their cases are being adjudicated.
The article starts with a title page on which the following appears: "The Obama administration's draconian policy toward female refugees and their children has sown misery on the border..." When you read the article, you discover that the conditions of which the article complains have existed since the W. Bush administration. But you won't find any reference to the fact that two bipartisan immigration reform bills were passed by The Senate in the 113th congress and died in Boehner's House, not because they couldn't pass, but because Boehner wouldn't allow a vote in the knowledge that it might well do so. Add to that the Republican intransigence on the sequester, which resulted in cuts in the budgets of all government departments including Homeland Security, and a commensurate decline in the quality of housing for the applicants for asylum who were the subject of the piece. And while we are considering unconsidered facts that bear on the issues raised by the Times article, we should think about the fact that the Obama administration had to go hat-in-hand to congress to get more money for judges to adjudicate the cases faster and get people out of the holding facilities, the quality of which was the central cause for vilifying President Obama. So, the Times' castigation of the Obama administration may not have been wholly misguided, but there was more ground for criticism of other politicians who got no mention by the author, and that never crossed the mind of the editor apparently. If it did, he certainly didn't insist that the deficiency in the piece be corrected.
My only point is that we cannot have a true democracy if our electorate is not informed and endowed with resources by which to check the facts for itself. The internet is reliable if one uses it with an appropriate amount of discriminating diligence, thoroughness and skepticism. There are reliable sources that are unbiased on almost every point of fact, and if we all refer to them and confirm or refute claims of fact...especially those made by people with political motivations...we should be able to make sound decisions about who runs our country. But if we don't, we'll get...well, what we have now.
Your friend,
Mike
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