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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

The missing millionaires

Once, in Dallas, I set out to write something critical of a local Islamist imam’s preaching. I phoned his office to talk with him and to get a comment before writing. I also e-mailed asking him for comment. He refused to respond, so I wrote the column, noting that I’d reached out to him and […]

Once, in Dallas, I set out to write something critical of a local Islamist imam’s preaching. I phoned his office to talk with him and to get a comment before writing. I also e-mailed asking him for comment. He refused to respond, so I wrote the column, noting that I’d reached out to him and he didn’t respond.

Some months later, the usual suspects from the local Islamic community turned up in our office to complain about my supposedly bigoted writing. I pointed out to the lead complainer that when I set out to write a particular essay to which he objected, I’d tried twice to get a comment from the imam, to get his side of the story. He had an opportunity to respond, I said, but chose not to.

Said my accuser, something to the effect of: “Can you blame him, given how biased you are?”

You see the Catch-22: Journalist is biased because he writes with Bias about Subject, but Subject refuses opportunity to make his case to Journalist, ensuring that Journalist will be accused of Bias.

I bring that up to illustrate a point about how spin works. This morning, NPR provided an instructive look at same in a report on the GOP’s opposition to extending payroll tax assistance to workers, and paying for it through a small surtax on millionaires. Democrats accuse Republicans of sticking up for millionaires at the expense of the little guy. But the Republican line has been that such a tax would hit small businesses hard, and make it more difficult for them to hire. Funnily enough:

We wanted to talk to business owners who would be affected. So, NPR requested help from numerous Republican congressional offices, including House and Senate leadership. They were unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.

So we went to the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax. Again, three days after putting in a request, none of them was able to find someone for us to talk to. A group called the Tax Relief Coalition said the problem was finding someone willing to talk about their personal taxes on national radio.

Oh, b.s., Tax Relief Coalition. That no GOP offices, or anti-tax business groups whose job it is to engage in lobbying (which includes media appearances), could produce a single actual business owner to explain why the tax would harm job creation, tells you something. So NPR put out a call on its Facebook page for any business owners who wanted to comment. Several answered — and they all said that the surtax issue has little or nothing to do with decisions to expand their workforces.

Hmm. This report makes it sound like Congressional Republicans and business lobbyists were just pulling the small business thing out of their hats to find a politically palatable way to protect millionaires. The report ends by saying that there may be anti-surtax small business owners out there, but it sure is hard to find any willing to explain their position. But you watch: conservatives, ignoring the good-faith effort of NPR’s reporter to find people on the GOP’s side of the issue to talk to, will now say that this NPR report is a classic case of public radio’s left-wing bias.

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