The Ignorant Press
Peters, Charles
The Ignorant Press by Charles Peters At the League of Women Voters’ Presidential Forum in Boston on February 23 of this year, Jimmy Carter said that he favored elimination of the income tax...
...Carter’s tendency to avoid being specific about the issues is encouraged by the ineptitude of the press in drawing him out...
...Bayh said, “We don’t need a Democrat running around the country peddling Republican principles,” and Morris Udal1 said, “I think Jimmy’s wrong...
...In the case of the mortgage proposal, if the political reporters covering it had been knowledgeable enough about tax reform to deal with it as a substantive issue, as opposed to a campaign tactic, there are three points they could have made...
...During the periods between election campaigns, they are like fish out of water...
...The other candidates, who have the staffs to prepare intelligent, substantive replies, have no incentive to do so, because the reporters are just as incapable of evaluating the merits of the reply as they are of the proposal...
...But what kind of story...
...The staff work on McGovern’s proposal was sloppy, and the press was justified in criticizing it-but not in letting Hubert Humphrey get away with painting as radical a program that had been sponsored by such leftists as Richard Nixon and Wilbur Mills...
...They got away with it because of the ignorance of the political reporters...
...I think he’ll have a taxpayers’ rebellion on his hands...
...Income tax reform is not a subject on which little has been written or said...
...The reaction of the other candidates was automatic: what a terrible idea...
...But as far as political reporters are concerned, Carter might equally have spoken out against too much tabasco sauce in bloody marys, or in favor of the serial comma (as in a, b, and c...
...If we’re going to have real tax reform, each of us has to give up his own dirty little secret-the Texas oil man, the capital gains millionaire, and the average man with his home mortgage interest deduction...
...The reason that substantive issues tend to be subsumed into the general discussion of “the conduct of the campaign” is that this is all political reporters know about...
...Robert L. Turner of the Boston Globe, for example, wrote two stories on the statement, each of which con-tained a denunciation of the proposal by Carter’s opponents...
...Turner’s treatment of the story was followed by other political reporters, who, if they analyzed the suggestion at all, did so in terms of its significance not as tax reform but as a tactical mistake, possibly as serious as Muskie’s tearful scene amidst the snows of New Hampshire four years ago...
...If vou are not, you’re against the cities...
...Carter argues, cor-Crectly, that such homeowner deductions benefit affluent taxpayers more than the poor...
...In 1972 George McGovern’s $1,000 “demogrant” proposal was reported by men who seemed staggeringly ignorant that it was actually another version of Pat Moynihan’s Family Assistance Program, which had been passed by the House of Representatives during the preceding year...
...If logrolling is a fine American political art, the Internal Revenue Code is the biggest logjam we have...
...But none of the reports have analyzed the substance of the bill or discussed how it compares with past efforts or other proposals to stimulate employment...
...I can’t believe he really means it...
...The reporters’ response was automatic: get a reaction quote from the other candidates, then assess the effect on the campaign...
...speculating...
...In the other story, Milton Shapp-the candidate who stressed his low-key administrative competence and good sense-was quoted as saying, “I think it’s astounding...
...they do not cover government...
...Instead of boning up on the issues, by finding out what some government agency is actually doing or by covering the critically important congressional budget committees, the reporters continue their mad telephone dialing of state party chairmen and political consultants...
...In one story, Jackson called the elimination “ridiculous...
...Even when he is specific, as in the mortgage interest matter, the reporters don’t know how to explore the significance of the stand...
...The third point is that Carter’s suggestion revealed that he was contemplating a much more thorough reform of the tax structure than his supposedly more liberal opponents, who not only didn’t have the courage to take on the mortgage issue, but actually attacked Carter for bringing it up...
...In this context, raising serious issues is like talking to the wind...
...The resulting association of the guaranteed annual income with losing radicalism probably postponed the enactment of this reform for a decade at least...
...For political reporters, this was a story...
...Charles Peters is editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly...
...The task is hopeless if they can’t even understand it...
...The problem is that political reporters cover politics...
...working toward the day (which they have virtually achieved) when that uncomfortable period between campaigns-as uncomfortable as an aging actress’s time between husbandswill have ceased to exist...
...egging the politicians on in print...
...A candidate is at the reporters’ mercy to get his message across...
...Birch Bayh and spokesmen for Shriver and Harris had all joined in the attack on Carter’s proposal...
...They know much about the process of being elected, and little about what the government does or how it could be improved...
...The first was made, finally, in an article about Carter by James P. Gannon in The Wall Street Journal of April 2, six weeks after Carter made his statement in Boston: “Mr...
...The benefits of the mortgage interest deduction may not be as narrowly based as those of the oil depletion allowance, but its net effect on income distribution is negative The second point is more important...
...The answer provides an answer to another question, one we have heard repeatedly throughout the spring primary season: why is it that serious political issues play such a minor part in political campaigns...
...All because political reporters understand 7’ the process of politics but not the substance of government...
...Morris Udall has, for example, been quoted as saying, “If you are for the Humphrey- Hawkins bill, you are for the cities...
...During the campaign itself, of course, they spend most of their time traveling in packs and covering staged events, with their analytical skills focused on polls and campaign strategy...
...The poor newspaper reader trying to decide whether he wants Jimmy Carter as his president gets very little help from this kind of analysis...
...If Carter cannot run his campaign properly, how can he run the country properly...
...The Ignorant Press by Charles Peters At the League of Women Voters’ Presidential Forum in Boston on February 23 of this year, Jimmy Carter said that he favored elimination of the income tax deduction for interest payments on home mortgages...
...There have been many references in reports of the campaign to the Humphrey-Hawkins bill...
...sounding out...
...All of these quotes came before an explanation, in the ninth paragraph of one article, and in the eleventh paragraph of the other, that Carter favored eliminating the mortgage interest tax deduction only as part of an overall tax reform that would reduce taxes for low and middle-income taxpayers...
...It would be disastrous for the housing industry and would raise mortgage payments 30 to 40 per cent for many people...
...At best, he is forced to reason backwards to some sort of conclusion about the candidate’s “leadership ability...
Vol. 8 • May 1976 • No. 3
