David Cay Johnston’s article of course does not claim what some very sloppy folks, in a subsequent game of “telephone” as observed by another poster, concluded and ultimately reported as fact.
However, based on the version of the article that Johnston pointed us at at the NYT, its sloppy wording and unsupported editorial commentary sets up a chain of easily made incorrect assumptions that other lazy or biased reporters were likely to misinterpret. In particular, consider the following paragraph:
Analysis of the I.R.S. data by The New York Times found that average reported incomes fell or were virtually flat at the end of the period at every level of income except for the poorest 26 million taxpayers, the bottom fifth. Those impoverished taxpayers made less than $11,166 each in 2004 and had an average income of $5,743, up $135 or 2.4 percent, from the year 2000.
The first sentence discusses I.R.S. data about “reported incomes” – fair enough. Then, it switches to discussing what a subset of those taxpayers “made” (I now assume, but do not know, that Johnston meant “reported” based on his comments above about “context”). Although somewhat vague, in all common usage “made” means something very different from “reported to the I.R.S. as AGI”. As a casual reader, I would assume the word “reported AGI” would have been used in the second sentence if that was what was meant. For one example, IIRC a person who receives $10K in interest from Federal tax free muni bonds would have a “reported” I.R.S. income of zero from that source while a person who receives the same amount of income from taxable interest would report it as $10K. Surely it isn’t the case the first person “made” nothing on their interest while the second person “made” $10K (indeed, from most people’s view, since the first person’s after-tax net was higher than the second person, most people would consider the first person to have “made” more from their interest payments).
Similarly, the “reported income” mysteriously switches to just “income” in the second sentence.
In an apparent act of switching from factual reporting and fact based analysis to editorializing, Johnston tells us that filers whose reported (adjusted gross?) income falls in the lowest quintile of (reported adjusted gross?) income are not only the “poorest”, but are actually “impoverished”. It’s completely unclear how this conclusion is supported by the I.R.S. data as someone whose reported AGI is low may have a substantial assets and may even have a very adequate earned “under the table” or unreportable income. He admits that a number of things are legitimately omitted from the reported income, yet seems to conclude that low reported income must imply “impoverishment” (many retirees who live fairly well must be “impoverished” by Johnston’s standards in spite of having net worths of a few million dollars).
As well, it does not appear to me that the implied point of the article was even supported by the facts presented as they imply that a statistic from the I.R.S. can be used to reliably determine much. The headline completely omits the word “reported” (which is a critical omission) – although I will charitably assume that the headline is not written by the author so Johnston probably doesn’t deserve any blame on this point (the NYT does though).
Upthread, Johnston consistently prides himself on his many years of experience and integrity while trumpeting his ability to using his “1,116 words to pack in a great deal of information”. Unfortunately, his integrity does not seem to expand to refusing to write about issues he can’t adequately cover in 1,116 words. If his integrity is as strong as he asserts, hopefully this will be a lesson that one should pick integrity, and hence clarity, over arbitrary word counts and make a decision to cover the local street festival if that’s all he can cover accurately in his 1,116 alloted words. At a minimum, with his vast integrity and years of experience, he should negotiate final approval of anything published under his byline (i.e., if he doesn’t agree with a hack job done on his work by editors, he should be sure he has the power to insure it’s not published under his byline). Hopefully, as he drifts into retirement, he will try to do better in his last few articles.
The Gray Lady is now clearly not what she was once (perhaps incorrectly) purported to be. The deathwatch of the conventional “authoritative” print media seems to be paralleling the arrogant professional death spiral of Dan Rather.
