Brendan Nyhan’s post earlier this week about the lackluster coverage of President Obama’s “outsourcing” attack on Mitt Romney threw pointed darts across the media landscape, pricking outlets like the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, CBS News, and others for failing to truly examine the merits of charges. And when the Romney campaign and the Republican Party this week turned the “outsourcer” line back against Obama, much of the early coverage was similarly skin-deep. For example, reports by The Associated Press and CBS News noted that the Romney campaign cited a Washington Post article about liberal critics of Obama’s outsourcing record as evidence—but didn’t really examine how well the details in that article support Romney’s rhetoric.
Against that backdrop, we’re happy to be able to award a laurel to Michael Shear and Richard Oppel Jr. of The New York Times, who on Tuesday took a skeptical look at the outsourcing rhetoric coming from both campaigns, and found it often wanting. Regarding the Obama campaign’s attack, the Times reporters cited the work of FactCheck.org, which concluded that Obama and his allies are overstating Romney’s connection to outsourcing and offshoring at firms in which Bain Capital had invested.
On the other side of the aisle, the NYT focused not on Romney’s stump speech but on a new website set up by the Republican National Committee, which alleged that billions in stimulus money had been sent improperly overseas. Shear and Oppel called up the companies listed by the RNC and found—surprise!—that many of the claims “do not bear out as fact.”
(To be sure, federal money did go to companies with substantial overseas operations, and given the current political climate the particular companies in question have an incentive to describe their activities in the least-outsourcing-related way possible. But from a journalistic perspective, calling up the companies in question is a darn sight better than not calling them. And variations on the messages now surfacing have been previously questioned or debunked by factchecking groups—see here, here, here, and here.)
Shear and Oppel relay this news with an air of exasperation: called out by critics, they write, “the two candidates and their allies have all but stuck their fingers in their ears while continuing with their outsourcing attacks.” Which is true enough. But, as Nyhan has also written for CJR, the continued existence of misleading political statements is not evidence that factchecking doesn’t do some good. So no reason for discouragement—and more like this, please!
On a related note, Stephen Koff of the Cleveland Plain Dealer earns a laurel for his detailed look at Bain’s management of clothing retailer Stage Stores, published last Saturday. Stage is at the center of another Obama campaign attack on Romney’s business record, and Koff’s piece relies on SEC filings, court records, and interviews to piece together how much credit, or blame, Romney and Bain merit for Stage’s rapid expansion and subsequent bankruptcy.
The result is nuanced and ambiguous: Some readers may come away seeing Stage’s struggles as a result of the debt burden Bain foisted upon the company, while others may point to an adverse retailing environment and poor management decisions made after Bain sold its stake. But sometimes life is ambiguous. Koff has done the hard work here of sorting through a complicated situation, and his readers—whatever conclusions they draw—will be better-informed as a result.
As I mentioned in the first Bain article, some real fine parsing going on here. Did Bain outsource to Mexico before or after he left? Did Bain outsource or offshore?
We sure know he offshored his profits.
And outsourcing isn't an immediate process which a company can flick a switch to execute. Land, employees, training, tax arrangements have to be set up before a move of manufacturing. Are you going to say definitively that these plans and negotiations commenced the day after Mitt left Bain?
And fact check's defense of Gov Romney's outsourcing of government functions consists of "yeah, he supported it, but it was not JUST him."
"The state wasn’t outsourcing contracts. Rather, in some cases, state contractors were subcontracting work to companies overseas. Romney vetoed a bill that would have prevented the state from doing business with companies that outsourced any state work to other countries. The veto was supported by leading newspapers as a savings to taxpayers. The Democratic Legislature did not override Romney’s veto, as it did with most of his vetoes.
At the center of the issue was a contract the state signed with CitiGroup (which later sold the division to JP Morgan Chase) to handle calls about food stamps, and that company outsourced the work to a company in India. At the time, 38 states had similar contracts with JP Morgan Chase to handle food stamp calls. It became an issue everywhere, and Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur called for federal legislation to ban it."
So again, when you break down the who contracted what to what three levels down - what do you end up with? Government overcharged for services that used to be done by well compensated workers, but now go to bottom wage workers so that the executives and shareholders can increase their cut of the pie.
And this is admitted even by the guys who defend Mitt and his record at Bain:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/opinion/creating-jobs-wasnt-romneys-job.html
So let's cut to the meat of it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/opinion/off-and-out-with-mitt-romney.html
"Why, for example, do many large companies now outsource cleaning and security to outside contractors? Surely the answer is, in large part, that outside contractors can hire cheap labor that isn’t represented by the union and can’t participate in the company health and retirement plans. And, sure enough, recent academic research finds that outsourced janitors and guards receive substantially lower wages and worse benefits than their in-house counterparts.
Just to be clear, outsourcing is only one source of the huge disconnect between a tiny elite and ordinary American workers, a disconnect that has been growing for more than 30 years... if Bain got involved with your company, one way or another, the odds were pretty good that even if your job survived you ended up with lower pay and diminished benefits.
In short, what was good for Bain Capital definitely wasn’t good for America. And, as I said at the beginning, the Obama campaign has every right to point that out."
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 11 Jul 2012 at 06:53 PM
I found that Shear NY Times piece unconvincing. The Obama ad said Bain engaged in outsourcing and that Bain at the time was listed as being wholly owned by Mitt Romney. But the Times article said Romney didn't have hands-on control of Bain at the time. Who cares? That's hair-splitting. If Bain was outsourcing and Romney as owner was profiting from that practice, then he should be held responsible for that practice, just as the Obama ad stated. I find these CJR pieces to be removed from reality. The average person would say that the person who owns a company and profits from the company's practices should be held responsible. You guys are engaged in sophistry in trying to separate Romney from the actions of Bain, which Romney even today continues to profit from.
#2 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Thu 12 Jul 2012 at 02:19 AM
It's too bad you have to go to Al'jazzera to hear from Dean Baker, Josh Kosman, and Mike Konczal on the subject of Romney, LBO's, and gaming the tax code.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/20122164215194680.html
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 12 Jul 2012 at 03:35 AM
More on Romney's ownership and official leadership of Bain through 2002:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/questions-romney-left-bain-capital-135713042.html
#4 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Thu 12 Jul 2012 at 12:54 PM
Yeah, once again, as with the Ryan "He's not ending medicare, he's replacing it with Medicare V.2!" the fact check is veering republican again.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/07/12/glenn-kessler-romney-surrogate/
But you have to pity them. In order to appearlike they're checking both sides they have to give the republicans a few mulligans since they are such enormous liars.
As Chris Mooney put in his Nation article (linked here)
"Our analysis found that from the inception of the “Fact-Checker” column in September 2007, through December 2011 (after it resumed under Kessler), Republicans were given ratings on the Pinocchio scale 178 times and Democrats 137 times, for 315 ratings overall. (We did not include liberal, conservative or neutral groups and individuals in this analysis, and we also omitted the Post’s late 2011 “biography” items on the GOP presidential candidates, as these would have greatly inflated the GOP total and had no Democratic parallel.) Already, then, Republicans were flagged for significantly more misstatements by the Post. Indeed, we found that Republicans received 436 Pinocchios, while Democrats received just 291. This means about 60 percent of all Pinocchios for explicitly political falsehoods went to Republicans and about 40 percent to Democrats during this time.
One might argue, however, that this is misleading: if Republicans were rated more times overall, then of course they got more Pinocchios. But it turns out that the average Republican rating (2.45 Pinocchios) was worse than the average Democratic rating (2.12 Pinocchios). Not only were Republicans given more Pinocchios by the Post, then, but whenever they got rated, they tended to do worse than Democrats.
Arguably the biggest insight, however, comes from looking at the individual Pinocchio categories. Republicans got nearly three times as many “four Pinocchio” ratings as Democrats (thirty-three versus twelve), according to our analysis. They were also overrepresented in the “three Pinocchio” category (forty-two versus thirty-one) and the “two Pinocchio” category (seventy-six versus fifty-five), the most frequent category used.
But, interestingly, this trend did not hold up in the “one Pinocchio” category, in which Democrats predominated (forty versus twenty-six). In other words, although the Post flagged Democrats for a lot of minor sins, the more egregious falsehoods were clustered among Republicans. (In checking one of President Obama’s statements, Kessler acknowledged it was such a minor infraction that it might deserve a “half-Pinocchio,” if there were such a thing.)"
Nit picking one side to maintain the perception of objectivity. It's centristy delicious.
#5 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 12 Jul 2012 at 03:43 PM
I suspect a great deal of the controversy is over definition. Voltaire said, "Before you speak, define your terms."
When using words like "outsourcing" and "offshoring", a definition of each should be made. I thought they were the same. Is there a difference? Is there a distinction? Is there a distinction without a difference.
In comedy one of the most common scenes is of two people talking at cross purposes, each oblivious to the fact that the other is on a different channel.
I carry no brief for Romney, but is he charged with "outsourcing" while he ran Bain Capital, or owning the company that did it?
If outsourcing was done, let's find out what jobs were moved, where they were moved to, who benefited, and who lost out. That's fair game.
#6 Posted by David Reno, CJR on Fri 13 Jul 2012 at 11:29 AM