So Much for Objective Reporting

February 17th, 2010

A Reuters article describes Obama’s defense of the stimulus:

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden launched a sweeping effort to convince skeptical Americans that the stimulus has been beneficial on the one-year anniversary of a plan that was pushed through the U.S. Congress by Democratic majorities.

Obama, in a White House speech, said he believed the stimulus will save or create 1.5 million jobs in 2010 after saving or creating as many as 2 million jobs thus far.

His point was to show that the stimulus, while admittedly unpopular, had the effect of keeping the U.S. economy from plunging into a second Great Depression.

They don’t mention the problems with the administration’s “saved or created” measure; they don’t question his thesis. Rather, they portray it in a positive light.

Contrast the above with this, from the same article:

Republicans eager to score political points emailed out to reporters the original administration estimates from a year ago that showed the U.S. jobless rate would only rise to 8 percent under the stimulus.

“In the first year of the trillion-dollar stimulus, Americans have lost millions of jobs, the unemployment rate continues to hover near 10 percent, the deficit continues to soar and we’re inundated with stories of waste, fraud and abuse,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

So, because Republicans point out that the unemployment rate far exceeds what the administration predicted (and even exceeds what they predicted it would be without the stimulus), they are “eager to score political points?”

And Obama isn’t? Isn’t that precisely what he’s doing by defending the stimulus — trying to convince voters the stimulus was a success, and thus gain their political support? Isn’t that what politicians do?

But for this reporter, that isn’t attempting to score political points. That’s just telling the truth. Do you get it yet? For this reporter, Obama tells the truth, and tries to do everything right for the country — whereas Republicans only try to gain political advantage.

If that isn’t a political bias infecting an ostensibly-objective news agency’s work, I don’t know what is.