When a super-wealthy guy like Warren Buffett talks about taxing the rich-- in the pages of the New York Times, no less-- it gets the rest of the media talking. But that doesn't mean that talk will get things right.

Here's one example from ABC World News (8/15/11):

BIANNA GOLODRYGA (ABC NEWS): Much of Buffett's income comes from capital gains, profits resulting from investments, and they're taxed at only 15%. Buffett's solution, rates should be raised for the 300,000 Americans who make more than a million a year, left alone for everyone else. An additional 1% tax on the richest Americans is estimated to raise $100 billion in extra revenue during the next decade. But tax experts say it's not enough for just the super-rich to pay more.

MAYA MACGUINEAS (PRESIDENT OF THE COMMITTEE FOR A RESPONSIBLE FEDERAL BUDGET)

The bottom line is that the fiscal hole that we face is so large that everybody is going to have to be prepared to pay more in revenues in the end.

Nowhere does Buffett propose that his income tax rate should be increased one percentage point. In fact he talks about how his income tax rate is about half of what people who work in his office are paying. His column also talks about how the super-rich get a break on capital gains;  as Buffett sees it,  when the capital gains rate was 39.9 percent-- over twice what it is now-- it didn't stop people from investing.

So why is ABC low-balling his call to tax the wealthy? More realistic projections of how much can be gained by rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy tell a different story.   Chuck Marr at Center on Budget & Policy Priorities pointed out one way to raise a trillion dollars over 10 years:

Returning the average tax rate on the top 1 percent of taxpayers to its 1996 level of 29 percent could raise about $100 billion a year, or $1 trillion over the next decade.

Chuck Collins and Alison Goldberg note that

Almost 500 high-income taxpayers support the Fairness in Taxation Act, that would increase top tax rates on millionaires, generating an additional $78 billion in urgently needed revenue.

A New York Times story following up on Buffett's column pointed out that

his proposal would put a significant dent in the nation’s budget shortfall. Based on projections by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Congressional Budget Office and the Treasury, the tax increase on all three fronts would generate as much as $500 billion in new revenue over the next decade — about a third of what the Congressional committee is supposed to cut from the deficit.

The ABC report does conclude by pointing out that this $100 billion figure could build 7,000 new elementary schools. But Buffett's actually proposing to raise far more money than that. Why is ABC trying to give the super-wealthy a break?

From ABC World News, 11/11/09:

CHARLIE GIBSON: We understand he's raising new questions about a number of plans that are in front of him. What new questions are there to be asked after all this time?

MARTHA RADDATZ: Well, you would think he'd be through with the questions, Charlie.

Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times (11/15/09):

Barack Obama is in danger of giving deliberation a bad name.

David Broder, Washington Post (11/16/09-- headline: "Enough Afghan Debate")

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right.

ABC World News did a segment on March 31 with a bunch of short reports on how the global recession was hitting around the world.  Most of them were like this:

CLARISSA WARD (ABC NEWS): I'm Clarissa Ward in Tokyo. Japan is the second-largest economy in the world. And lifetime employment has always been the ideal here. But as global demand for Japanese cars and electronics plummets, companies like Toyota and Canon are being forced to shed tens of thousands of jobs. And for many workers in Japan, losing your job means losing your company housing. Thousands of laid off workers are now living in homeless shelters or, even worse, on the streets. Hideki Metsuhashi was fired in January from his job, making air filters for Toyotas. "I was sleeping in this park for a week," he says. "I never imagined my life would be this hard."

But the one from Kenya--the only one from Africa--went like this:

DANA HUGHES (ABC NEWS): I'm Dana Hughes in the Masai Mara Reserve. People from all over the world travel here to see some of the most magnificent wild animals on the planet. Tourism is the second largest contributor to Kenya's economy after agriculture. It brings in hundreds of millions of dollars each year. But this year, the tourists aren't coming. Luxury lodges, usually filled with Europeans and Americans, are practically empty. In the game park, rangers who make their living pointing out and protecting lions, giraffes and zebras are worried about their own futures as well as the animals'.

STANLEY MASHUKO (RANGER): Once we are not there, then the poachers will come in and kill these animals.

You can accuse some in the media of paying too much attention to the bonuses at AIG, but on ABC's newscast they've been doing the opposite--trying to tell people to stop talking down "our" company.

ABC's World News With Charles Gibson, March 17:

CHARLES GIBSON: Let me turn to Betsy Stark. There is an awful lot of, I guess you could call it AIG bashing going on. But as a lot of people pointed out today, there's a real danger in this, because everybody in this country has a vested interest in AIG succeeding, because we, the taxpayer, essentially own the company, right?

BETSY STARK (ABC NEWS): That's right, Charlie. American taxpayers own 80 percent of AIG now, and their best hope for recovering some of the tens of billions of dollars that they've sunk into the company is for the government to sell off AIG's many good businesses. But if the AIG name continues to get dragged through the mud, it's only going to run down the value of those businesses and make it harder for taxpayers to get the very best price, so the outrage is understandable, but it comes at a real-world cost.

ABC's World News With Charles Gibson, March 18:

CHARLES GIBSON: And one more thing, you and I talked last night about the fact that all of us, the taxpayers actually own AIG. And as this controversy goes on, we may be driving down the value of the company we own. You've talked to insurance people, I know, all day long. What do they say about that?

BETSY STARK (ABC NEWS): You know, the irony is that taxpayers could be cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Their anger is justifiable, these people say, but they have got to keep sight of the fact that they are talking about $165 million in bonuses, and they have got a $170 billion investment to protect. That's what they own.

CHARLES GIBSON: All right, that's what we all, in effect, own. Betsy Stark, thanks very much.

If one really took this argument seriously--don't criticize things owned by the public--then wouldn't all sorts of things be off limits?

Courtesy of the New York Daily News (3/18/09):

ABC's World News anchor Charles Gibson at one point considered being a sports reporter.

However, he ultimately realized the job was more difficult than it looked.

"I began to realize that sports journalism was so difficult because if you cover a team, you have to stay in the good graces of that team," Gibson tells Michael Kay in the YES Network's CenterStage airing Thursday at 10 p.m.

"So, do you pull your punches?" says Gibson. "Do you not write about the fact that so-and-so is a drunk? Or that so-and-so may be on the juice?"

Good thing that kind of thing doesn't go on in the big leagues of corporate journalism.

The ABC network, in conjunction with the BBC and Japan's NHK, has repeatedly polled Iraqis about the state of their country and the U.S. occupation. On Monday night (3/16/09) they aired a report that featured findings from the latest poll. Anchor Charles Gibson reported:

Every year we have taken an extensive look at where things stand. Polling Iraqis and sending reporters across the country, both at times dangerous undertakings. But this year, extraordinary change, real optimism. 59 percent of Iraqis now say they feel very safe in their communities. And 65 percent say things are going well in their own lives. Both numbers up dramatically.

Reporter Terry McCarthy also cited the poll: "84 percent of Iraqis now say their neighborhood is safe, almost double the level in 2007." But neither Gibson nor McCarthy mentioned some of the poll's other striking findings, which were outlined by Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell (3/17/09):

Last year, 70 percent of Iraqis in the same survey said we were doing a bad job there. This year that dropped all the way to...69 percent. And that includes the always more favorable views of the Kurds.

That means 90 percent of Sunnis are negative (remember, they are supposed to be "awakening" towards us), and two out of three Shiites agree--largely unchanged from 2008....

Fifty-six percent now say the U.S. was wrong to invade, actually up (despite the cooling of violence) since last year's 50 percent.

Mitchell quoted an ABC News online piece (3/16/09) that gave a more balanced account of the poll than that night's broadcast:

Just 27 percent [of Iraqis] are confident in U.S. forces (albeit nearly double its low). Just 30 percent say U.S. and coalition forces have done a good job carrying out their responsibilities in Iraq. Still fewer, 18 percent, have a positive opinion of the United States overall. Barely over a third think the election of Barack Obama will help their country.