The Obama White House made (yet another) move bound to disappoint progressive activists.  But good luck trying to get corporate media to explain the impact.

Here's how the September 3 New York Times piece by John Broder started off:

WASHINGTON — President Obama abandoned a contentious new air pollution rule on Friday, buoying business interests that had lobbied heavily against it, angering environmentalists who called the move a betrayal and unnerving his own top environmental regulators.

The president rejected a proposed rule from the Environmental Protection Agency that would have significantly reduced emissions of smog-causing chemicals, saying that it would impose too severe a burden on industry and local governments at a time of economic distress.

Business groups and Republicans in Congress had complained that meeting the new standard, which governs emissions of so-called ground-level ozone, would cost billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs.

So this new standard would lead to HUNDREDS of thousands of lost jobs? Wow. That's a powerful argument against it. Where does that figure come from? Is  it correct? The Times is of no help--"balance" requires that both sides get a hearing, no matter the details.

But a little history would be helpful. Similar claims were made during 1997 debates about provisions of the Clean Air Act; as this Center for American Progress report demonstrated, the massive job losses that industry warned about are difficult to spot.

Broder was back on the job-killing beat on September 5, writing (along with Motoko Rich) a piece with this lead:

If the White House encouraged Americans to prevent colds by wearing sweaters, one would hope that media outlets would point out that there's no evidence that being chilly has anything to do with catching a cold.

Likewise, if the Interior Department green-lights a plan to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean in order to demonstrate "a willingness by President Obama to approve expanded domestic oil and gas exploration in response to high gasoline prices," as John Broder and Clifford Krauss wrote in the New York Times today (8/5/11), then reporters really ought to point out that expanded offshore drilling can only have the tiniest impact on the price of gasoline, since oil is  a global commodity and the United States does not have enough offshore oil to meaningfully increase the world supply.

But don't hold your breath.

"2 Republicans Open Door to Increases in Revenue" reads a headline in Monday's New York Times. The suggestion is that a few Republicans are walking away  from the the party's no-tax-hike orthodoxy. That much is clear from John Broder's lead:

Two senior Republicans said Sunday that they might be open to raising new government revenue as part of a deal to resolve the dispute over the federal debt ceiling, but they warned that there was little time to enact a comprehensive deal.

This would be a pretty remarkable development. So who are we talking about? Broder reports:

One of the senators, John Cornyn of Texas, said he would consider eliminating some tax breaks and corporate subsidies in the context of changes in the tax code, provided there was not an overall increase in taxes.

That sounds like no shift at all-- Cornyn went on to rule out any tax increases.

But he insisted that any changes in taxes be “revenue neutral,” meaning that the government would not take in any more money from individuals or businesses than it does now.

OK-- he supports raising revenues, so long as there is no increase in, well, revenues. Is there a clearer example Broder is thinking about?

The other senator, John McCain of Arizona, said he would be willing to consider some “revenue raisers” as part of a broad deal, but he refused to name specific measures.

He was specific about one thing:

“The principle of not raising taxes is something that we campaigned on last November, and the result of the election was that the American people didn’t want their taxes raised and they wanted us to cut spending,” he said on the CNN program “State of the Union.”

This article provides the evidence to refute its premise, which I guess is helpful.

The New York Times had a good editorial on May 20 headlined "Gas Prices and Political Pandering." The paper slammed Republican rhetoric about domestic production and gas prices:

[Sen. Mitch] McConnell said his bill would bring relief at the pump by raising domestic output. That is fiction. Production will take years to come online and even then would have a tiny impact on prices set on the world market.

And they also pointed out that Obama was making similar arguments:

Last weekend, he, too, was out there pitching domestic production.... None will quickly lead to new drilling or have any effect on gas prices. Yet because his remarks were framed as a response to gas prices, he helped feed the Republicans' bogus narrative.

So who the heck is doing this bogus framing? Oh yeah--the New York Times, in its news section.  John Broder wrote this lead on May 15:

President Obama, facing voter anger over high gasoline prices and complaints from Republicans and business leaders that his policies are restricting the development of domestic energy resources, announced Saturday that he was taking several steps to speed oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters.

So the editorial page is where bogus narratives are questioned, while the news section is where they're propagated.

Today it's the New York Times (5/6/11) framing the story according to nonsensical GOP talking points:

House Passes a Bill to Expand Offshore Oil Drilling

JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON -- With rising gasoline prices and skyrocketing oil company profits as a backdrop, the House approved a bill on Thursday to force the Obama administration to accelerate oil lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Virginia.

The 266-to-149 vote, largely along party lines, was a skirmish in the larger battle between Republicans and Democrats to capitalize on consumer anger over the price of gasoline, which has now passed $4 a gallon in most parts of the country.

Once again: Domestic drilling will do next to nothing to affect gas prices. (Mostly) Republican politicians want people to believe the opposite, and push policies to that end. But journalists should question the premise of these political maneuvers, not merely reinforce them.

Do you want to know what environmentalists think of the "compromise" climate bill unveiled by senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman yesterday? If so, don't read the New York Times today. Times reporter John M. Broder (5/13/10) quotes Kerry, Barack Obama (a supporter of the bill) and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (formerly a somewhat iffy supporter).

He also references the feelings of two main industry groups--the Edison Electric Institute and the American Petroleum Institute--as well as BP, ConocoPhillips and the United States Chamber of Commerce.

Then, in the second-to-last graph:

Some environmental advocates were involved in drafting the bill and were highly supportive. But other environmentalists said the bill did not go far enough and offered too many concessions to win industry support.

Well, that tells you...nothing.

Assessments from environmental groups aren't hard to come by. The headline of the Public Citizen press release conveys their view: "It's a Nuclear Energy-Promoting, Oil Drilling-Championing, Coal Mining-Boosting Gift." The Institute for Public Accuracy's release refers to a " Bonanza of Corporate Giveaways." Such views would have been helpful for readers interested in assessing the bill's actual contents.

The formula for "contrarian" journalism was aptly summed up by Wonkette (1/6/09):

Take a widely accepted belief (e.g., "Dogs make good pets") and write a cool 600 words arguing why its opposite is SECRETLY truer ("Why all dogs should die").

Of course, it helps if the upside-down world you're proposing turns out to be one that is surprisingly cozy to powerful corporate interests.  Thus the piece that appeared on the front page of the New York Times today (4/4/10) arguing that maybe we're all a little too worried about that oil spill in the Gulf.

To back up this counterintuitive notion, reporters John Broder and Tom Zeller turn to an "expert":

"The sky is not falling," said Quenton R. Dokken, a marine biologist and the executive director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, a conservation group in Corpus Christi, Texas. "We've certainly stepped in a hole and we're going to have to work ourselves out of it, but it isn't the end of the Gulf of Mexico."

Who is this "conservation group" minimizing the impact of a massive oil spill on the area it specializes in conserving?  That's what Marian Wang of ProPublica (5/4/10) wondered, too.  Turns out it's not really a conservation group at all:

At least half of the 19 members of the group's board of directors have direct ties to the offshore drilling industry.  One of them is currently an executive at Transocean, the company that owns the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded last month, causing millions of gallons of oil to spill into the Gulf of Mexico.

Seven other board members are currently employed at oil companies, or at companies that provide products and services "primarily" to the offshore oil and gas industry. Those companies include Shell, Conoco Phillips, LLOG Exploration Company, Devon Energy, Anadarko Petroleum Company and Oceaneering International.

The Gulf of Mexico Foundation's president is a retired senior vice president of Rowan Companies Inc., an offshore drilling contractor.

Meanwhile, Transocean hosted the group's winter board meeting in January and sponsored a dinner for the board of directors. Past board meetings have been hosted in full or in part by Anadarko Petroleum Company, Shell Exploration and Production, Valero Refinery and Marathon Oil Corporation.

So it's not exactly surprising that the executive director of such a group would have a nonchalant view of the impact of oil spills on the Gulf.  What is maybe a little surprising is that the New York Times would present a coalition of offshore drilling interests as neutral experts on the environment.

And it's not like the Times reporters didn't know who they were quoting. In an addendum to her ProPublica piece, Wang quotes an email response from Zeller:

We were aware of GMF's industry partnerships--and for what it's worth, I believe they also have members from the agriculture and fishing industries, among others. As you'll note from Dr. Dokken's bio, the group also includes marine scientists.

You could certainly mount the argument that such co-mingling might influence his assessment of the oil slick and how bad it might get, but as I understand it, the bulk of GMF's operating budget comes from federal and state grants, so that wasn't my sense.

So because the group gets government grants, the Times reporters thought it wasn't worth mentioning that half the group's board represents the very industry whose damage to the Gulf is being minimized?

"Of course, it’s probably always better to err on the side of full disclosure," Zeller tells ProPublica--as if revealing that you're quoting an industry group speaking in its own defense would be bending over backwards--"but we operate within space constraints as well--and I believe we did link out to the various websites, so enterprising readers could peruse their boards and sponsors."

Here's a tip for the Times: Next time you are running into "space constraints," maybe you can free up some room by killing the piece that revolves around an industry spokesperson telling readers not to worry about the damage the industry that employs him has done to the environment.

UPDATE: The New York Times published an Editor's Note on May 5 saying that the article "should have included more information about" the Gulf of Mexico Foundation: "While the group says the majority of its funding comes from federal and state grants, it also receives some money from the oil industry and other business interests in the gulf, and includes industry executives on its board." While few readers--"enterprising" or not--would realize from that additional info that offshore drilling interests represent half the group's board, we suppose it's better than Tom Zeller's response.