Summary
Brian Riedl actually digs up the data on the federal budget, and provides the link for anyone who cares ("Myth of spending cuts," Commentary, Friday). Twenty-five years ago I used to have to take a hike to the local public library and ask the reference librarian if I wanted to see some hard, objective data on the U.S. budget. On the rare occasions that I took the effort, it was really shocking to compare the data with what was usually presented on the front page of the Post, New York Times, or even the Washington Star, long since defunct.
What is really disturbing is not so much the myths cited by Mr. Riedl but the sorry state of journalism that rarely lays out the data for a reader to ponder and leaves it at that. Instead, what the reader gets is spin and a perpetual abuse of language - cuts are not really decreases, and time intervals are adjusted to prevent any kind of objective context. All one can infer from this is that the newspaper editors and reporters must consider their readers to be dumber than stumps.See the full content of this document
Extract
Budget Blinders
Apparentl...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
