All sides have talking points. Journalists should use them to start an inquiry, not take them at face value.
United States Project
03:00 PM - February 28, 2013
Time to leave budget biases behind
Deficits are falling and government jobs are disappearing. Is it really so obvious we have a spending problem?
‘See you on the other side’ - Meet Jessica Lum, a terminally ill 25-year-old who chose to spend what little time she had practicing journalism
#Realtalk: This is the best moment to be in journalism - The old stuff isn’t coming back, but that’s okay
Streams of consciousness - Millennials expect a steady diet of quick-hit, social-media-mediated bits and bytes. What does that mean for journalism?
Sticking with the truth - How ‘balanced’ coverage helped sustain the bogus claim that childhood vaccines can cause autism
An ink-stained stretch - Can Aaron Kushner save the Orange County Register—and the newspaper industry?
What to do if you find a baby bird
Expert advice
Inside Google’s secret lab
We might deplore the practice, but posting pictures of our food online is a way to bring everyone to the table
How the ‘World’s 50 Best’ list changed the way elite restaurants do business
“Every time the restaurant switched up its format, it got plenty of accompanying media coverage that let judges know they needed to return to see what was going on”
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
Uptown Messenger – Hyperlocal news for a neighborhood in New Orleans
Who Owns What
The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
Impact on military academy addressed further here: http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2013/02/27/federal-budget-cuts-sequestration-flyovers-air-force-navy/1952415/
#1 Posted by Gary Mihoces, CJR on Thu 28 Feb 2013 at 03:21 PM
Those ill-informed members of the public might also be surprised to know that government jobs are disappearing under Obama—many of them state and local employees let go as federal aid from the stimulus package expired.
David, its not “many” of the jobs were from state and local payrolls, its “all” of the reduction in government payrolls were from state and local agencies.
Its no wonder you chose a misleading figure that supported your argument and ignored the actual data which did not.
During Obama’s first term government employment declined by 719,000 jobs, or 3.2 percent.
To reiterate: this decrease comes entirely from the state and local payrolls as federal jobs increased from 2,692 in 2008 to 2,756 in 2011. This number does not include the contractors working for the fed.
Even reporting that acknowledges these key facts often falls prey to budgeting biases. Wednesday’s New York Times featured an engaging front-page piece by Binyamin Appelbaum that opened with a clear explanation of the federal government’s “turn toward austerity,” and a look at austerity’s impact on jobs and short-term growth.
Anyone who can claim the government is entering an era of “austerity” when we are running nearly 9% of GDP deficits needs their heads examined.
an end to flyovers at sporting events by B-2 stealth bombers, the Air Force Thunderbirds, and the Navy Blue Angels. Even granting some leeway to a sports section piece, missing were key details like whether these planes are actually useful in providing the common defense, the estimated $135,000 per hour cost to fly the B-2, and the $2.1 billion cost to build each of them.
Couple of things. Flyovers come out of training hours. A B-2 might only be budgeted for 150 hours of (non-mission) flying time a year. Cut that training budget and time for things like flyovers just don’t exist. Additionally, it doesn’t cost $2.1 billion to build a B-2. The actual flyaway cost in 2012 dollars in $1,057 million.
Readers would have been better served if he had noted the more than 230 golf courses the military operates at home and abroad, and inquired about what the courses cost and how they contribute to the national defense.
And CJR’s readers would be better served if you mentioned the inconvenient fact that golf course on military bases are not free and are supported by greens fees. I believe they call that a "budget neutral" expenditure
Considering that this a hard journalism piece about budgets, dollars and cents, how much leeway do you think you get to play loose with the facts?
#2 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Thu 28 Feb 2013 at 10:03 PM
David, perhaps you should serve your country in uniform, or at least by working on a military base, before you try to use the recreational facilities of our troops as an example of profligate government spending. That was a ludicrous line and makes me wonder exactly what authority or expertise you have to write a piece like this. If you want your fellow journalists to take more care when writing about government spending, you should try it yourself, first.
#3 Posted by J Durocherj, CJR on Fri 1 Mar 2013 at 02:28 AM
Columnist here...
@ Gary Mihoces,
I am delighted to see that you followed up, in your piece posted after my column was filed. Bravo.
@ Mike H,
On federal/nonfederal jobs, I should have used “all or virtually all” rather than “many.” A hedge was necessary because data gets revised and BLS is not the only source of data on what I wrote about, which was all civilian government jobs by administration.
On B-2 costs, your preferred “flyaway cost” is not the total cost, but a defined cost that is far less than the burden taxpayers bear. Even then the total cost the GAO provided Congress may (hedge word) understate total costs because evidently (hedge word) the cost of research to develop radar-eluding technology was not counted in the GAO analysis.
And, along with J Durocherj on greens fees, I have been unable to find any document indicating what share of total costs (see “flyaway” above) fees cover. Other journalists who have sought spending data have been turned away by the Defense Department, despite Art. I, Sec. 9, Cl. 7 of the Constitution requiring that “a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.”
Any costs not covered by such fees would be born by taxpayers, which is the relevant measure. If you have such data please share.
Based on the greens fees I reviewed before writing my column, and my previous research on stealth subsidies to a specific group of Oregon golf courses for my book FREE LUNCH (subsidies whose existence the course owner acknowledged in my video interview), it is hard to imagine the greens fees cover the total costs, the expense relevant to taxpayers.
That still leaves the question of how military golf courses contribute to national defense, which I suggested as a good topic for inquiry. I did not question athletic facilities, but proposed inquiring about “what the courses cost and how they contribute to the national defense.”
And, @J Durocherj, one need not serve in the military to write about military spending, anymore than one must be a member of Congress to write about lawmaking or take drugs to write about them.
I have been writing about government spending since 1966, exposing waste, abuses and the like. Just two devices my work shut down were valued by Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation staff at more than a quarter of a trillion dollars (please note that "t").
#4 Posted by David Cay Johnston, CJR on Fri 1 Mar 2013 at 09:32 AM
David, you provided a figure for the B-2 as how much it “cost to build each of them”. That is the textbook definition for flyaway cost, not my “preferred” term. You could have referred to program cost (which is what I assume you were referring to) but that’s not how you defined it. It’s like they say, words have meanings.
Golf courses, which are a Category C Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) programs, are by definition self funded.
The Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, which you refer to in Free Lunch, has no association with the MWR program and is therefore irrelevant to the point of this discussion, a red herring.
The US Army’s MWR’s states it purposes as follows: Soldiers are entitled to the same quality of life as is afforded the society they are pledged to defend. Keeping an Army ready to fight and win takes more than hard work and training. Soldiers need a balance of work and play. The Family and MWR mission is to create and maintain "First Choice" MWR products and services for America's Army, essential to a ready, self-reliant force..
Do you take issue with the MWR’s purpose?
While “one need not serve in the military to write about military spending”, your apparent lack of understanding of some of the basic issues and terminology associated with it certainly leaves you at a disadvantage.
#5 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Fri 1 Mar 2013 at 11:13 AM
Thank you Mike H for a far more articulate defense of MWR than I was able to assemble, although our intent is the same. Despite the fact the author has been covering government waste since 1966, he is way off the mark in his understanding of what it takes to keep soldiers employed and motivated in modern society.
#6 Posted by J Durocher, CJR on Fri 1 Mar 2013 at 08:48 PM
Ha! Golf courses? All that & you guys are all about the golf courses?
The idea that military recreation facilities are "self funding" was debunked as early as 1954, when congress inquired into the sports car races held on air force bases in 1953. Those were "self-funding" only if you discounted the labor supplied on a "volunteer" basis by airmen--the guys who were calling congress to complain that they were not actually volunteering.
The races were stopped, but the Pentagon's questionable accounting--and its tendency to invest heavily in exactly the kinds of recreation favored by top brass--continued evermore.
#7 Posted by edward Ericson Jr., CJR on Sat 2 Mar 2013 at 10:38 AM
@Mike H,
Again, the relevant cost is what taxpayers must bear, which is $2.1 billion per B-2.
The point of Bandon Dunes was to indicate previous research into golf course subsidy economics (and that was just a representative example of my digging into this over the years), which helped form the basis of my observation about costs. Again the relevant measure is what taxpayers must bear. If you know of budget or accounting records showing greens fees revenues against all-in costs please share, as I cannot find any and I know of journalists who have been denied such basic records, which surely cannot be withheld on the basis of national security and thus ought to be revealed per Art I, Sec 9, Cl 7. How military golf courses contribute to national defense remains a good question for journalists to investigate. See also post #7 by edward Ericson Jr.
#8 Posted by DavidCayJohnston, CJR on Sat 2 Mar 2013 at 07:40 PM
@ edward Ericson Jr
I fail to see what car racing 60 years ago has to do with the modern MWR system. And I know you have this image of golf courses and other recreation facilities being full of 0-6’s and up but the reality is most of the active duty members playing there are enlisted.
@ David
Regardless of what you think the relevant cost is, that’s not what you described. Its difficult for an educated layman to take a professional journalist seriously when they regularly and routinely flub basic concepts.
Back to golf … unless you have some special insight into golf courses, bowling alleys, recreational lodging, bingo, or any of the dozens of other MWR activities that fall under category C (self funding) and can demonstrate even on an anecdotal level that it costs the DOD operational funds to sustain them you really don’t have much of a case.
#9 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Mon 4 Mar 2013 at 09:58 AM