Congressman Billybob Sez: Ping-Pong Reporting

This here's the 333rd Report ta the Folks Back Home from the (More er Less) Honorable Billybob, cyberCongressman from Western Carolina.

This Report sorta covers the renomination ov Judge Charles Pickering ta the Fifth Circuit Court ov Appeals, n President Bush's tax relief plan, both announced las week. Sorta. Cuz the real subjeck izza reportin on both issues, not the issues themsells.

Ma able assistant, J. Armor, Esq., has been rattin fer publication in newspapers fer 46 years now, so I'll turn this over ta him.

Ping-pong reporting results when reporters (and their editors) think they have covered a major story, when they have spelled the names right, stated the issue, and then quoted "leading" figures who say, respectively, yes and no on that issue. This is not competent reporting. And that incompetence shows up in the coverage of both the Pickering nomination and the Bush tax relief plan.

We begin with Judge Pickering. The attacks against him are that he is a "racist," though most opponents avoid that charged and ugly word. Instead, they imply it.

The reporting on the subject consists largely of quotes from those who support him and from those who oppose him. The stories are largely fact-free on the truth (or not) of the charges against him. And that is the principal flaw of ping-pong reporting. Most readers are not hard-wired in their prejudices. They can go either way on an issue at hand, depending on the facts. But fact-free reporting does not inform the readers. It reinforces their biases by giving them only the choice of supporting the "yes" opinion or the "no" one, without a solid basis for either.

The first telling fact about the Pickering nomination is that it's supported by some "civil rights" leaders and organizations, and opposed by others. That alone should perk up the antennae of reporters. Both sides cannot be right. One has to be acting not for "civil rights" but for crass political advantage. But it is not politically correct to examine the bona fides of any "civil rights" organization or leader. So, most reporters and editors are afraid to enter that factual thicket. I, however, am not.

The two charges against Pickering are that he "supported miscegenation laws" (which prohibited interracial marriage) and that he "favored a cross-burner." Let's put some facts on the table.

As a law student, Pickering wrote a Case Note on miscegenation laws. Anyone who has ever gone to law school, plus anyone who understands the law reviews that most law schools publish, knows what a Case Note is. Bright students who have just been accepted for law review receive a Case Note as their first assignment. The student takes up a recent local case, compares it with similar cases elsewhere, and says what the law IS. Law students who are wet behind the ears are neither expected to, nor allowed to, have opinions of their own. They are forbidden from including what they think the law OUGHT TO BE.

Forty years ago when Pickering, as a young student, wrote his Case Note, it was accurate. The U.S. Supreme Court decision which struck down miscegenation laws was still a decade away. Let me use an example anyone can understand.

There was only one law professor in America in 1775, George Wythe. He had a handful of students, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, and George Mason. Had one of them been assigned a Case Note on sovereignty in the American colonies, the accurate answer --- then --- was that King George III held the power, exercised through Royal Governors appointed in each colony, with the assistance of popularly-elected legislatures subject to absolute vetoes.

Would the writing of such a legally-accurate Note demonstrate that Jefferson and the others opposed freedom and self-determination for Americans? Of course not. Exactly the same is true of Pickering's Note, 40 years ago.

The "cross-burning" charge comes from a federal case in Mississippi in which two defendants, including the ringleader, pleaded guilty and received no jail time on a plea bargain with Clinton-appointed prosecutors. A third defendant pleaded innocent but was convicted and threatened with seven years in jail. Pickering pointed out the absurdity of giving one defendant long jail time, while letting the other two walk. After months of delay, the prosecutors agreed with Judge Pickering, and the sentence was 27 months. Not exactly the actions of a "racist."

A fact conveniently dropped out of stories that oppose Pickering is his service as a state prosecutor. He came out publicly against the Ku Klux Klan. He was then defeated for re-election. Again, not exactly the actions of a "racist."

Reading these facts, which are generally missing in the ping-pong reporting on Pickering, will not change the opinions of any readers whose biases are hard-wired. But they may be useful for the sensible middle of American public opinion. It's unfortunate that most reporters and editors think their task is complete when they have quoted opposing opinions on a subject, and don't bother to dig into and report the underlying facts.

The same journalistic failure rears its ugly head in the coverage of the tax relief program just proposed by President Bush. Opponents say that the plan would only "help the rich." But no reporter in the known universe has yet pinned down any opponent on the question, "Who counts as rich?" Again, some facts would solve the problem. What benefits would the plan offer to a Chicago firefighter married to a school teacher, with two children? Does their combined income of $80,000 mean that couple is therefore "rich"?

Would an end of double taxation of corporate dividends, first as profits in the hands of the corporation and then as income to the shareholder, benefit the "rich"? Either through personal ownership or through dependence on company or union pension plans, a majority of all Americans now own stock. They depend on dividends on those shares. The group with the highest percent ownership of stocks are the elderly --- especially those who are retired and use such income to supplement the admittedly inadequate payments from Social Security.

Again, some facts would help answer the question of whether the supporters or opponents of the plan are telling the truth. It is a matter of simple statistics to find the "average" retired couple. Then it's a matter of competent reporting to go to Elephant Breath, Mont., and sit down with Mr. and Mrs. Cuthbert Smerdlap and go over their personal finances. How much do they get from Social Security? How much do they get from stock dividends or pension funds? How much tax relief would they get, if this plan is approved?

Perhaps the reason why most reporters and editors do not go down this path, is they know where it leads. If it would lead to the factual conclusion that less elderly people would be forced to forgo some of their medical care or eat cat food if the plan passed, that would put the opponents of the plan in a bad light.

Most of the opponents of the plan are Democrats. They claim they are for "the little people." If the facts show that little people --- both two-income families and the retired elderly --- are helped by the plan, that would badly undercut the Democrats' claims.

We put another fact on the table. Most reporters and most editors are Democrats. Could that possibly play a role in the decisions to use ping-pong journalism --- to use quotes for and against, but never go digging in the underlying facts?

I've taken the trouble recently to pin down the politics of the editorial boards of the Kansas City Star and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Constitution's board has 10 members, of whom one is a Republican and eight are Democrats. The last one is hard to classify, but is probably also a Democrat. The imbalance on the Star is almost as bad.

Both newspapers have their editorial knickers in a twist over the Bush tax relief plan. Both are engaging in ping-pong journalism in covering it, and editorially opposing it. Could the politics of their editorial boards have anything to do with that?

I had some correspondence with the Op-Ed editor of the Star, Miriam Pepper, and asked her to come on a national radio talk show with me to discuss the possible bias of her board. She declined. She also told me that neither I nor her readers had any right to know the party registration of her board. It was "none of our business."

Fortunately, ping-pong reporting is a self-solving problem. The monopoly of the "leaders" in the mainstream media has been broken, and is crumbling more each day. Last week there was a report of a poll that found that "22 percent of Americans now get their news from talk radio."

As a veteran of talk radio, I find that bit frightening. There seldom is time on talk radio to go deeply into the facts of any issue. Plus, any hosts who did such a thing might be buried in a chorus of clicks, as people stuck in traffic or stuck in kitchens, hit the buttons to get another station so they won't be bored.

Still, talk radio is part of the heady mix, with the new cable news channels and especially the Internet, that is pumping out reams of facts -- some of them accurate -- on these and every other subject. As the tag line for "The X-Files" proclaimed, "The truth is out there."

Some facts are better than no facts. And most of the facts that will determine both the fate of Judge Pickering's nomination and of the Bush tax relief plan are getting out there, by dribs and drabs. The mainstream media are dying on the vine. They're selling buggy whips in an automobile age. And one fringe benefit of that decline will be the exposure of ping-pong journalism.

(About the author: Congressman Billybob is fictitious, but prolific, on the Internet -- the invention of John Armor, who writes books and practices law in the U.S. Supreme Court. Comments and criticisms are welcome at CongressmanBillybob@earthlink.net).

This was published last Thursday. However, by then I was already on my way to D.C. to take part in Rally III on the Mall.

I think FReepers will appreciate this one as well. The next UPI column, "Necessary Lies -- Iraq & N. Korea," is already written and submitted, but not yet published.

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5 posted on 01/22/2003 7:41:59 AM PST by goodnesswins ((I'm supposed to be working on my book and business, but THIS IS MORE IMPORTANT!))

Thassum purdy writin there, CB.

Not only doesn't the media take the time to research facts in order to help the reader distinguish which side is spinning, but there is another problem.

There is an increasing tendency of legislators to read "press reports" as evidence into the record in both houses. This forms a vicious circle in which the press prints stories based on spin without facts, and then the Congress uses these fabrications to argue their positions.

Facts are left completely out of the equation.

Nice work.

But fact-free reporting does not inform the readers. It reinforces their biases by giving them only the choice of supporting the "yes" opinion or the "no" one, without a solid basis for either.

Since many can no longer reason they are just making it simple by offering two easy choices of propaganda.

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