Annie Jacobsen’s piece on Pajamas nails the Los Angeles Times for some truly bogus reporting. The paper made the ridiculous statement that sixty million Americans live on seven dollars a day. Annie’s article will give you an idea where they got this “information.” Eyes will roll.
And yet this is not in the slightest a surprise – just another nail in the mythological coffin that the mainstream media is superior to blogs and new media in the realm of fact-checking. Although the MSM continues, Khruschev-like to bang their shoes about this, the echo of those heels is sounding increasingly hollow. In fact, in many ways they are worse, because the firewall between themselves and the audience that we don’t and indeed can’t.
I’ve published this before, but it bears repeating. My personal experience with LAT fact-checking a few years ago went like this: I had written an article about a Siberian film festival at which I had been on the jury. After I submitted my piece, a woman called and asked me, “Is everything you wrote true?” I said, “Yes.” She thanked me and hung up. That was fact-checking.
Of course, my experiences in Siberia were not as important as assertions about the level of poverty in America…. but their fact-checking on that appears to have been even worse.
Truly fascinating. The current on-going fisking of David Cay Johnston (The NYT reporter whose several articles started all this) and his own defense is even more revealing.
Basically he stands by his analysis (BTW, the final number he gave had lots of asterisks with lots of explanations, and still not quite explaining how he come by the number, ìgo check it yourselfî). What other people use the one sentence from his final analysis to mis-inform and to inflame is not his business. He did not actively refute those claims until yesterday. Yet he must have known people widely quote NYT as respectable source.
A little editing would be helpful, though: “In fact, in many ways they are worse, because the firewall between themselves and the audience that we don’t and indeed can’t.” ??
As I posted on the Pajama Media site, at a minimum David Johnston is being exceedingly duplicituous in reporting Adjusted Gross Income as total income. This excludes a minimum of $8,200 in standard deductions and personal exemptions. It also fails to account for any Earned Income Credits.
There’s an old saying, “Everything you read in the newspaper is true except for those things you have personal knowledge of”.
You are looking at this the wrong way. Rather than trying to debunk this dubious claim, one should instead celebrate the miraculous ability of people being able to live in the US on $7 a day. Remember we are not talking about people who are starving to death. There used to be travel books titled Europe on $5 and $10 a day. Imagine, 40 years later we can now write a new book entitled the US on $7 a day. Will wonders never cease!