Saturday, January 21, 2006
More on Howell.
Mark Schmitt compares the Coushatta tribe's actual giving to the fragment of the list cited by Deborah Howell. "The Center for Responsive Politics list shows the Coushattas giving $500 to Cleland and $5,500 to his opponent, Saxby Chambliss. Likewise, the fragment suggests $2,000 to Jean Carnahan; in reality, neither the Coushattas nor any other Abramoff client gave to Carnahan but both Abramoff and his clients gave $3,000 to her opponent, Jim Talent. Senator Daschle, whose name appears on the fragment of a list with an illegible amount, did not receive any money from the Coushattas...." Those were the only three Democrats on Howell's first graphic.
Adjust the numbers on her first graphic and now you have $155,000 to Republicans and $500 to Democrats: a ratio of 310:1.
(I posted the following as a comment on Semi-Daily Journal, but it fits here, too:)
I've been thinking about why it is that Deborah Howell and her colleagues are more interesting in printing what their sources are telling them than it what they think their readers should hear.
Rather than assume that journalists are acting irrationally or maliciously, we should assume that they are rationally responding to the incentives they understand. I think the answer is that they do not spend much time thinking of themselves as operating in a market in which they sell reporting to consumers. (Witness the attitude on display here.) They're not identifying with their employer, which is worrying about how to get people to buy newsprint when they can pay nothing for pixels -- they're thinking about their own career, in which success (apparently) is a function of their access to the utterances of important individuals. They see themselves competing as buyers in a market of on- and off-the-record statements and other information, and they worry that if they do not regurgitate the GOP's talking point that Abramoff was donating to Republicans and Democrats alike, they will not have access tomorrow.
The problem for newspapers is, how to compete with other sources of information if their reporters are more interested in preserving access than providing reportage worth paying for. The Washington Post ought to be rethinking its reporters' incentives.
Adjust the numbers on her first graphic and now you have $155,000 to Republicans and $500 to Democrats: a ratio of 310:1.
(I posted the following as a comment on Semi-Daily Journal, but it fits here, too:)
I've been thinking about why it is that Deborah Howell and her colleagues are more interesting in printing what their sources are telling them than it what they think their readers should hear.
Rather than assume that journalists are acting irrationally or maliciously, we should assume that they are rationally responding to the incentives they understand. I think the answer is that they do not spend much time thinking of themselves as operating in a market in which they sell reporting to consumers. (Witness the attitude on display here.) They're not identifying with their employer, which is worrying about how to get people to buy newsprint when they can pay nothing for pixels -- they're thinking about their own career, in which success (apparently) is a function of their access to the utterances of important individuals. They see themselves competing as buyers in a market of on- and off-the-record statements and other information, and they worry that if they do not regurgitate the GOP's talking point that Abramoff was donating to Republicans and Democrats alike, they will not have access tomorrow.
The problem for newspapers is, how to compete with other sources of information if their reporters are more interested in preserving access than providing reportage worth paying for. The Washington Post ought to be rethinking its reporters' incentives.
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