CNN’s Henry Misrepresents Personal Accounts Polls

Free Market Project ^ | 6/22/2005 | Dan Gainor

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Claims public ‘doesn’t support private accounts,’ but facts show otherwise.

Even as President Bush endorsed a new Social Security plan that didn’t focus on personal accounts, poor coverage of the reform issue continued. This time, it was CNN’s Ed Henry claiming that people don’t support personal accounts even though that isn’t the case.

According to Henry, on the June 21, 2005, “Inside Politics,” “We see polls across the board saying that the public by and large doesn’t support private accounts.” Henry didn’t cite any of the polls showing this overwhelming opposition. Henry didn’t even bother to quote from the skewed poll done by CNN/USA Today/Gallup from April 1-2, 2005.

That poll asked how people felt about an idea that would allow people to invest “some of their Social Security taxes in the stock market and bonds, but would reduce the guaranteed benefits when they retire.” The question ignored the obvious upside that, on average, investing offers a far greater return than Social Security and focused on the loss of retirement benefits. The question skipped the fact that Social Security is running out of money entirely. That last fact means Social Security will be unable to pay full benefits as of 2041 – a guaranteed reduction in “benefits when they retire.”

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More Social Security bias from CNN.