Is this a news story in The Wall Street Journal or a press release from the Office of the Governor of New Jersey? You make the call:
Gov. Chris Christie took New Jersey by storm in his first year as governor, thrilling Republicans by taking on entrenched Democratic power centers in the name of fiscal responsibility.
But with the state still slogging through the dregs of the recession and finances as precarious as ever, Mr. Christie says not to expect radical shifts this year, and he plans to “stay the course.”
In his first State of the State speech on Tuesday, Mr. Christie will focus on three issues: education, public pensions and benefits, and fiscal discipline.
It’s the top of a news story in the Journal’s Greater New York section, alas, although it could have come down the hall from WSJ sister news org Fox News.
Republicans are thrilled here, while Democrats are “entrenched,” we’re told, and the GOP governor has taken the state “by storm” with Frank Luntz-would-approve “fiscal responsibility” and “fiscal discipline.” And the “blunt, unapologetic” guv will “stay the course” despite brickbats from the unions, “who stood in his way,” and school-system reps whom he called “greedy and arrogant.”
These greedy opponents aren’t given a chance to respond. The FT-sized piece has just one source: The governor himself. You don’t need me to spell out what’s wrong with that.
And then there’s this, which finds a way to imply that Obama’s stimulus plan is to blame for one of the most severe challenges Christie faces next year:
A particular challenge will be a $1.4 billion deficit in Medicaid, blown open by the disappearance of $900 million in federal stimulus funds, he said.
Those federal stimulus dollars didn’t just magically appear out of thin air only to disappear again to cause Christie headaches. The more correct way to put it would be: “a $1.4 billion deficit in Medicaid, which was eased last year by $900 million in federal stimulus funds.”
This is the second time in the last three weeks we’ve noticed the paper playing stenographer to Governor Christie, the Republican hero whose approval rating is lower than President Obama’s (the WSJ, to its credit, noted the poor Christie poll at the time, though not in the paper).
Last month, the Greater New York section parroted Christie’s spin on New Jersey’s job numbers and made a hash of the economic reporting. I said this then:
The bottom line is, if you’re going to do a story about a governor trying to take credit for creating jobs in his state, which is a dog-bites-man story if there ever was one, you’ve got to actually report the context.
Otherwise, you might as well reprint the governor’s press releases.
Worse than reprinting the governor’s press releases: Writing them yourself.
The 3-graf WSJ excerpt you cite as stenography is no worse than what the AP and other, famously unbiased and respected news-giants produce, every day, when covering the FedGov's Keynesian economics and Wilsonian foreign policy. I'm not saying that this makes it okay; I'm just saying...
And btw, your suggested re-writing, above, arguably would outdo the WSJ by not only turning paraphrase (or source-quoting) into editorial, but also turning an anti-spending argument into a pro-stimulus one, thus egregiously misrepresenting your sources' view. (At the very least, you'd be stating editorial — political? — opinion as fact within a news piece.) After all, the very next direct-quote makes obvious what the ill-worded paraphrasing was meant to convey: "We have to figure out a way to be more efficient and effective." (I.e., we have to keep those stimulus funds from "disappear[ing]" so quickly.)
Also, in so many words, you say that the WSJ is coddling Christie vis-a-vis his political opponents. Yet when one reads the full paragraph, it would appear that Christie is being cast in a negative light: "He loudly bashed those who stood in his way, notably the state teachers union. In November he called a superintendent and school board members greedy and arrogant, and last week he went after a mayor who complained about the state's response to the blizzard." (Seems rather aggressive, intimidating and unethical, like a schoolyard bully.)
Again: The WSJ piece may be awful, but is small fry compared to the massive and everyday volume of pro-policy, pro-war, Federal PR being produced by the AP, NYT, et al. Go after them, too, on a regular basis — and not merely from a "pro-democracy" or "left-wing" or "populist" POV — if you want to make a worthwhile, positive, substantial difference in how the press checks govt power.
#1 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 11 Jan 2011 at 12:05 AM
Thanks Dan, for illuminating the false reasoning, political bias of this writer.
Of course some of Christie's proposals are unpopular. He actually wants to balance the budget! Most politicians don't have the political will to do that, to show the costs involved in benefits programs, and hold them accountable. they just push the payments to the next generation. The next generation can't protest because they are still infants, and unable to. So Christie asks the unions to compromise a bit and everyone starts wining. This country is going down the toilet without a balanced budget, fiscal responsibility, and unfunded pension liabilities. Thanks to the politically powerful unions that have most of our politicians in their hands. Except Christie, of course.
#2 Posted by marguerite, CJR on Tue 11 Jan 2011 at 01:04 AM
Thanks, Marguerite, but I do not mean to defame Mr. Chittum or CJR. I merely wish that he and other press peer-reviewers would take the issues to the deeper levels. Sorely missing from "mainstream" news coverage is a focus on the role of the federal govt, state govts, and individuals in this constitutional republic: whether the federal govt should act at all, e.g., as opposed to which FedGov action is appropriate according to whom ("the left" or "the right") you ask. Granted, I understand it is not easy to break the mold: a friend of mine, an editor, was forced to kill a series of stories on charities v local social programs v state social programs v federal ones. Still, that type of ethical and brave approach to political news-reporting is extremely vital if Americans are to be adequately well-informed.
#3 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 11 Jan 2011 at 04:50 AM
I don't know if Ryan Chittum wrote for The Audit in the wake of the 2008 Obama election or not; I am relatively new to the CJR. But I seem to recall far worse examples of "journalism" coming from the NYT, AP, etc., in the weeks leading up to and following the presidential inauguration in 2009. Worse than being reprints of press releases, I remember wondering why our new president needed to employ people in his press office, when he had so-called journalists writing aggrandizing pap like that.
Beyond that, perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I can explain why whenever Democrats win the majority in a house of Congress, "journalists" write that the people elected them or that they won the election. But when Republicans win a majority, they "take over" or "seize power."
These games have been played for decades by partisans in the press. You can't just call out one side for committing a sin and expect the other side that has complained about it for years to just sit quietly and let a self-appointed arbiter of conduct walk away without comment. Now, if someone can point to examples in which Mr. Chittum has written similar pieces about how left-wing partisan publications (or at least MSM publications that attempt to hide their bias) have gone over the line when writing about their "heroes," I will gladly excuse him from this critique.
#4 Posted by JB, CJR on Tue 11 Jan 2011 at 02:05 PM
Ryan Chittum sure does seem to have a particular animus toward Gov. Christie. I can't imagine why.
#5 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 12 Jan 2011 at 12:29 PM
We get it, Ryan. You don't like Gov. Christie for reasons not hard to surmise. More effective than your one-off criticisms of the WSJ's coverage of Christie would be a compare-and-contrast with, let us say, NY Times coverage of Christie - or, better yet, of a state governor of which The Times editorially approves. Then the charges of leniency might occur in a journalistic context, rather than in a vacuum.
#6 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 12 Jan 2011 at 12:34 PM
We get it, Ryan. You don't like Gov. Christie for reasons not hard to surmise. More effective than your one-off criticisms of the WSJ's coverage of Christie would be a compare-and-contrast with, let us say, NY Times coverage of Christie - or, better yet, of a state governor of which The Times editorially approves. Then the charges of leniency might occur in a journalistic context, rather than in a vacuum.
#7 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 12 Jan 2011 at 12:36 PM