What Bennett Said

I am seldom surprised these days by the collective ignorance and short attention span of the public. But, I am still naïve enough to expect the mainstream news to demonstrate an appearance of neutrality when it comes to reporting the facts.

An egregious example of bias is provided in today's Boston Globe, page A2 in a small, but prominently displayed piece, culled from the AP wire.

"THE NATION TODAY
Bennett's comments on abortions criticized
October 1, 2005
Washington, D.C.
The White House yesterday criticized former Education Secretary William Bennett for remarks linking the crime rate and the abortion of black babies. ''The president believes the comments were not appropriate," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. Bennett, on his radio show, ''Morning in America," was answering a caller's question when he took issue with the hypothesis put forth in a recent book that one reason crime is down is that abortion is up. ''But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down," said Bennett."

This - seemingly factual - rendering of the story is almost criminal in it's misstatement of the simple facts. The most poffesnsive sentence in the AP story "when he took issue with the hypothesis put forth in a recent book that one reason crime is down is that abortion is up" is a lie.

Bennett was not taking issue with the statistical reportage of the book (Freakonomics). He was making an important point to demonstrate that government policy cannot be based simply upon the statistics. He said "economic arguments should never be employed in discussions of moral issues".

What the Globe (or was it the AP?) left out of the story was the actual point of Bennett's statement:
"That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down."
Bennett is clearly an opponent of abortion. Anyone who actually thinks he was advocating a position favoring the abortion of any color of unborn babies is a fool.

Naturally, The White House issues a dumpfuck statement to mollify the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons who feed on the public's ignorance, and the predictable outrage of lefties who never read the full story will resound for weeks.

The disturbing thing about this is that it is the latest in a series of examples of the media failing in their role as factual presenters of what, when, where and how. A pair of incidents that come to mind are the flap in DC in 1999 over the use of the word "Niggardly" Earlier this year Harvard President Lawrence Summers got misquoted (and roundly criticized) when he spoke about the disproportionate representation of woment in science.

These are just a few examples of apparent misunderstandings that were NOT corrected by a fact-centered press.
A cynical person might even suspect that the rascals in the editorial room may have intentionally withheld clarifications to generate even more juicy news in the reactions of a dumpfuck public.