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Times Watch for
May 21, 2004
Pushing Tax Credits for Non-Taxpayers
Economics reporter Edmund Andrews files a report Thursday on the battle in Congress over expanding Bush's child tax credit. The story's subhead helpfully notes: "Measure Includes New Benefits for Higher-Income Families," and Andrews' story warns that extending the credit to higher-income families would be a budget buster. He also wonders why people making $10,500 a year will get no child tax credits, despite the fact that people at that income level pay little or no federal taxes:
"The new House bill would offer the full tax credit to families with incomes of up to $250,000, and it would offer a partial tax credit to families with incomes as high as $309,000. The cost of that expansion would be $69 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Tax Policy Center, a nonprofit research group in Washington, and the total cost of extending the tax credit for 10 years is about $228 billion. And while the House bill would add benefits for some low-income families, those who earn less than $10,500 a year would still get nothing at all."
For the rest of Andrews' story, click here.
• Edmund Andrews | Taxes
James Bennet, Unbalanced In Israel
Reporter James Bennet’s “Letter from the Middle East,” filed from the Rafah refugee camp (site of several Palestinian deaths, apparently by Israeli gunfire) takes evenhandedness to the point of setting up a moral equivalence between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian terrorists, lumping the groups’ conflicting claims into a general “fog of war.”
Focusing on conflicting accounts of how many children died during the Rafah shooting, Bennet’s article, “Children Fill Ledger of Death, No Matter How,” suggests both sides (Israeli soldiers and Palestinian terrorists) are equally guilty of generating a “fog of war”—though even calling the conflict a “war” risks dignifying terrorism by Palestinians against Israeli civilians.
Bennet later pens a classic journalistic trope, the “on the other hand” paragraph that attempts to suggest truth is unknowable and both sides are to blame: “Some things here are what they seem, and some are not. Israeli soldiers have camouflaged themselves in Palestinian vehicles. Militants have hidden smuggling tunnels in the basements of houses. Each side plays on what it considers the other's habit of deception to cast doubt on claims about the killing….Many of these differing accounts will never be balanced. Each side prefers its version of the facts. The violence continues, and the accounting can seem beside the point.”
But despite Bennet’s attempted balancing act, there are undeniable differences between Israeli soldiers and the terrorists who try to kill Israeli soldiers and civilians. Times Watch just wishes the paper would be forthright in stating them.
For the rest of Bennet on the conflict, click here.
• James Bennet | Israel | Palestinians | Terrorism
Even More Publicity for Al-Jazeera
Caryn James touted a documentary on Al-Jazeera and a forthcoming PBS film on Iraq war reporters who were not – horrors – embedded with American troops. The Times was so eager to promote the al-Jazeera film that it reran excerpts of an earlier A. O. Scott review of the film from April 2.
In the “Critic’s Notebook,” Caryn James roots on the liberal notion that American viewers have been subjected largely to cheerleading, pro-military reporting on their TV newscasts: “Two striking documentaries about journalists in Iraq suggest how rarely the harshest images — and sometimes the unwelcome news — have penetrated American newscasts until now.”
In promoting the documentary “Control Room,” a film offering a behind-the-scenes look at the anti-American propaganda channel al-Jazeera, and “War Feels Like War,” a forthcoming PBS film in their summer “independent film” series “Point of View,” James hailed that “These films suggest how vital it is to see beyond our familiar perspectives; yet even a glance at television reveals that viewers are at the mercy of the homogenized news we’re handed…Both documentaries are by directors who bring foreign perspectives to material we’re accustomed to hearing in the voices of Dan or Peter or Tom.”
If you think these voices were flag-waving superpatriots, see here or here.
James said the films “might leave viewers what direction American war coverage will take, now that there are at least a few signs of change…this week when Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, testified before Congress about the future of American troops in Iraq, Peter Jennings introduced the report by saying, ‘Many of the administration’s plans are not very clear.’” This is not the new Peter. This is the everyday Peter.
The Times was so eager to promote “Control Room” that they re-published A.O. Scott’s review from April 2.
For the complete James review, click here.
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org