Today the Washington Post's ombudsman posted a response to the flurry of criticism they've received regarding their recent report about how the ACA supposedly adds hundreds of billions to the deficit. The report was mocked by Jonathan Chait, Paul Krugman and many others.
I have to say the ombudsman's response to those criticisms actually annoyed me more than the original report. So much so I felt compelled to write in myself.
First, here is the WaPo's ombudsman, Patrick Pexton, responding to criticisms of the article:
On Tuesday, below the fold on Page A3, The Post ran a story from its reporter on national financial and fiscal matters, Lori Montgomery, about a new study of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, derisively called Obamacare but known among policy wonks as the ACA.
The study, by Charles Blahous of the free-market-oriented Mercatus Center at George Mason University, put meat and numbers on the bones of a Republican argument, made since 2009, that the act will add to the deficit. Blahous said that it will add at least $340 billion, and perhaps as much as $527 billion, to the deficit over 10 years.
Putting the story on A3 was the right judgment for a print publication. Montgomery urged her editors, correctly, not to put it on the front page: it wasn’t worth that.
But that’s so old-media. On The Post’s Web site, the story took off, even though it was prominent on the home page for only a short time. It immediately entered the partisan spin cycle of exaggeration, distortion and hyperbole.
If the right’s line of attack was, “See, we’re right, the president is lying about the costs of Obamacare,” then the left’s was more a guilt-by-association smear.
Most of my e-mails last week were from left-leaning readers snarking at The Post for running the story. The most amusing was this critic who accused Montgomery of being a “Koch teabagger shill; miserably lying IDJIT.” Yes, that was the spelling. You gotta laugh.
We in the media like the Web traffic that a story like this attracts. It quickens the media pulse; we all get a frisson of pleasure from being viral on the Internet for a day.
But I’m not sure the truth wins. The truth is that every complex law change, every annual federal budget, is a risk. They’re all based on assumptions and forecasts that may or may not come true.
And here is my LTE in response:
I was disheartened to read "Debating the Cost of Obamacare" because it dodges the relevant issues. Whether or not the ACA explodes the deficit or in fact reigns it in is actually VERY important... the reason you put the story on page A3 is because you knew it was misleading. That, however, doesn't cut it. If you want to report the story, report the WHOLE story, including WHY their numbers are so at odds with everyone else's, and where exactly these claims are coming from.
The idea that pointing out who is producing the study is "guilt by association" is ridiculous; As you should surely know, evaluating the reliability of sources is one of the most important skills any journalist should have. Furthermore, that was hardly the entirety of Chait's and Krugman's criticisms, as you imply when using a readers misspelled email to represent all the criticisms you have received from the left. The study relied on a highly unusual assumption in order to get the numbers it desired, as Blahous uses massive Medicare cuts as his baseline by which to judge the ACA. A Washington Post reader would assume (incorrectly) the story involves comparing the ACA to the status quo ('status quo' meaning current Medicare policy).
If you wanted to report the story, the assumption of massive cuts to Medicare benefits should have been a major part of it. A very astute reader might be able to ascertain from the story that that's what's going on, but the article makes no effort to clarify the point. And if that fact is not clear, then really your paper has failed to accurately report the story. Instead the report offers a vague quote from Obama administration officials criticizing the study's math, without ever actually explaining WHY it's misleading. It's typical "he said, she said" journalism which briefly describes each side's position, without making any attempt to get at the truth of the matter.
Your job as journalists should be to inform your readers so they have a better understanding of world and can make better decisions. An article like this does the opposite.
You wrote, "I'm not sure the truth wins." On this we can agree.
What do you guys think about all this?