Thursday, March 16, 2006
The GAO Gets it Right, the AP...
From today's Associated Press reports:
The bill also contains $19.2 billion for cleaning up and rebuilding the Gulf Coast after Katrina struck last summer. That would bring total hurricane-related spending to more than $100 billion.
From today's Government Accountability Office review of post-Katrina and Rita government contracting:
Congress has appropriated over $62 billion as an initial commitment of federal support to the Gulf Coast states impacted by the recent hurricanes.
Makes you wonder if the GAO has somehow managed to retain some integrity, despite the GOP's best efforts. Maybe we can recruit some GAO employees to go to work for the MSM or the SCLM (IYCMD). More on the GAO review in my next post.
Hate to say it, but the AP story was technically correct*, it referred to the $100B as hurricane-related spending not reconstruction spending. I've noticed that in most recent reporting on the subject, it's either referred to as hurricane-related or the amount is referred to with an implicit caveat along the lines of "according to the administration."
Anyone who reads liberal blogs should know the drill by now. The administration, or the right wing media, puts out spin or outright falsehoods. The MSM accepts the spin and reports it. Sometimes, the media catches the spin on its own. More often, after letter writing and blogging (most notably DPB), minor media outlets start to report on it. Finally the major media start to notice, print a correction and start to get the facts straight. Of course, the correction doesn't get placed as prominently as the original story and by then the spin has already been widely accepted as fact.
Unfortunately, it's somewhat worse in this case. I've yet to see even a back page correction in either The Times or The Post, and the corrected reporting is still misleading. The reporters at our major papers should probably spend more time reading GAO reports and less time reading White House press releases.
*In fact, it's only arguably technically correct. It's hard to find a clear accounting of the numbers, but The White House seems to be counting targeted tax cuts as spending. That's a tad inconsistent coming from this administration.
The bill also contains $19.2 billion for cleaning up and rebuilding the Gulf Coast after Katrina struck last summer. That would bring total hurricane-related spending to more than $100 billion.
From today's Government Accountability Office review of post-Katrina and Rita government contracting:
Congress has appropriated over $62 billion as an initial commitment of federal support to the Gulf Coast states impacted by the recent hurricanes.
Makes you wonder if the GAO has somehow managed to retain some integrity, despite the GOP's best efforts. Maybe we can recruit some GAO employees to go to work for the MSM or the SCLM (IYCMD). More on the GAO review in my next post.
Hate to say it, but the AP story was technically correct*, it referred to the $100B as hurricane-related spending not reconstruction spending. I've noticed that in most recent reporting on the subject, it's either referred to as hurricane-related or the amount is referred to with an implicit caveat along the lines of "according to the administration."
Anyone who reads liberal blogs should know the drill by now. The administration, or the right wing media, puts out spin or outright falsehoods. The MSM accepts the spin and reports it. Sometimes, the media catches the spin on its own. More often, after letter writing and blogging (most notably DPB), minor media outlets start to report on it. Finally the major media start to notice, print a correction and start to get the facts straight. Of course, the correction doesn't get placed as prominently as the original story and by then the spin has already been widely accepted as fact.
Unfortunately, it's somewhat worse in this case. I've yet to see even a back page correction in either The Times or The Post, and the corrected reporting is still misleading. The reporters at our major papers should probably spend more time reading GAO reports and less time reading White House press releases.
*In fact, it's only arguably technically correct. It's hard to find a clear accounting of the numbers, but The White House seems to be counting targeted tax cuts as spending. That's a tad inconsistent coming from this administration.
