(Big thanks and HT to reader
Tony S.) Even the
Columbia Journalism Review* was drawn to using the words "galling
negligence" to describe the work on an incredibly
misleading and flawed New York Times article from earlier this
week. As we reported in this
NewsBusters piece on Wednesday (1/17/07), the Times published a
piece called, "51% of
Women Are Now Living Without Spouse." We illustrated how the Times
tinkered with the numbers to get their headline. But even
CJR Daily
chimed on on what was so clearly a problematic article. (Emphasis mine:)
Leaving aside what struck us as strange methodology (like the
fact that the survey counted anyone over the age of fifteen as a
woman), there was something else disturbing about the piece.
It had a tone of exuberance that spun the numbers as an
unambiguously positive piece of progress for women. A quote
from William H. Frey of the Brookings Institute captured the mood of
it. The shift away from marriage, Frey said, represents "a clear
tipping point, reflecting the culmination of post-1960 trends
associated with greater independence and more flexible lifestyles
for women." ... (snip) ...
[A]part from a tossed-off
paragraph that reminds us that,
buried within these statistics,
seventy percent of
African-American women are
single, there is nothing to
indicate how the epidemic of
single parentage in the black
community contributes to this
statistic ... (snip) ...
Instead the rest of the article
is completely about those middle
class white women who insist
they have chosen to be without
ball and chain ... (snip) ...
Here's the closing paragraph. I
think you'll really like it.
What's going on here?
Maybe the Times, with CBS
mindlessly following, is
just pandering to its
imagined audience, among
whom middle-class white
woman living in the East
Village of Manhattan
must make up a large share.
But this doesn't explain the
galling negligence.
It's moments like these
when the paranoia of the
right wing who sees the hand
of liberal bias everywhere
becomes understandable.
Not that there is a
conspiracy at work. Only
that, if in the part of
America where reporters
live, being free from
marriage is an unequivocally
positive thing, this
shouldn't mean -- as this
article leads us to believe
-- that this is the case for
every woman in the country.
For some, what the Times is
describing as freedom feels,
one can imagine, like a
curse.
Don't you just love it when
you see the words "galling
negligence" in an article about
a New York Times article?
Here's a rare "bravo" to CJR.
Finally, Michael Medved, who discussed the Times piece on his
radio show on Wednesday, further shreds the study in his new column at
townhall.com. Check it out:
"Journalistic Malpractice in "Marriage is Dead" Report."
* A major donor of
The Columbia Journalism Review is
The Ford Foundation, who is well known in supporting "progressive"
causes. On its advisory board are folks like
Alex Jones (from NPR, PBS, and Harvard), who was largely responsible
for bringing Al
Franken's error-laden Lies and the Lying Lairs book to the
planet.