Both Sides

Perusing the articles listed on the internet I came across one with the heading “Study says Obama tax proposal could cost 700,000 jobs.” This was pretty strong stuff for someone who figured the result would be the opposite so I clicked on the text of the article. The first paragraph read ““Republican House Speaker John Boehner* hammered President Barack Obama on Tuesday after accounting firm Ernst and Young released a study funded by pro industry groups hostile to the Democrat’s agenda. (Italics mine) The firm’s results showed that Obama’s proposed tax hikes on the wealthy could cost the already sputtering economy more than 700,000 jobs.”   Anyone reading the heading and not the article could easily conclude that facts have caught up with Obama. Reading the text is essential to understanding that this “study” was paid for by Republicans to an accounting firm that was expected to come to this kind of conclusion.** There should have been no problem with a proper layout on the internet. Something like “House Speaker says Obama tax plan to cost 700,000 jobs” would have sufficed as a heading followed by the text which would then explain among other things who was financing the project.   Whatever the medium, this sort of misleading presentation of news is common and supplies what many, if not most voters consider information. In presenting “both sides” of an issue talking points are given the same respect as evidence. Could this policy be the editor’s intention to help Republicans as compensation for all those facts the “liberal media” have been spreading?   To repeat an old saw, if one party decided the earth was flat there would be headlines reading “parties differ on shape of earth.” There’s no question in my mind as to where the flat earthers would hang their hats.      

*My spell check accepted “Boehner” as it should. After all he is Speaker of the House of Representatives. Two entries it continues to reject are “Barack” and “Obama.” Is there a message here?  

**When Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell was asked on the Dick Cavett show about the dangers of marijuana, he said that a test was underway to be completed in two years that “will prove conclusively “ the dangers involved.