Who is Martha Coakley to St. Petersburg Times readers?

I was poised to post an item with the "Piquing PolitiFact" tag after suggesting a fact for PolitiFact to check.  So far they have taken none of my suggestions, so far as I am aware.  Here is the latest:

(click to enlarge)


With some time elapsed since I posted, I began to wonder what "In the Know" readers of the Times know about Martha Coakley.

The Times search function produced three results for Coakley.

1.  The first, from 2002, was a brief mention of Coakley respecting her former role as district attorney.

2.  On Sept. 28, 2009, E. J. Dionne mentioned Coakley in an op-ed picked up by the Times:

The woman to beat is Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who has the most statewide recognition.

Coakley has received an unexpectedly strong challenge from Republican Scott Brown.  Judging from his op-ed, Dionne didn't see it coming.

3.  The third mention comes hot off the virtual presses, dated Jan. 15, 2010.  A brief blurb about a President Obama digital campaign appearance on behalf of Coakley accompanies the story of the unions cutting a deal to delay implementation of the Cadillace insurance plan tax on (who else?) the unions.  Sounds like the unions learned a little something from Ben Nelson (D, Neb.).  The story in the Times omits the apparent terms of the deal.  The story does mention Scott Brown by name and affirms that Obama lent his support in light of the fact that the race in Massachusetts between Brown and Coakley is "competitive."  No word on why that might be.

In the know.

In the Know: underwear bombs

Many radio listeners know about underwear bombs.  The type of bomb, that is, that was used in a botched terrorist attack on Christmas day.

ABC News even had a photograph.

So what do readers of the St. Petersburg Times know about underwear bombs as of today?

Putting "underwear" and "bomb" together in the search window at the Times' online Web site drew a page and a half of hits, but nothing about the recent attack.

A second search using "Flight 253" and "bomb" produced a pair of hits:

Click the image to enlarge.

The first hit was apparently a set of blurbs on the main page.  No relevant information was available on the page by the time I checked.

The second hit was fresh, dated Dec. 30.  The story goes into the background of the would-be bomber, and only near the tail end of the story (inverted pyramid, anyone?) do we get a small set of curious details.

Why curious?  Read for yourself:

Detroit: About noon Friday, officials say, Abdulmutallab tried to ignite an incendiary powder mixture he had taped to his leg as Flight 253 made its final approach to Detroit. He is being held at the federal prison in Milan, Mich.

For all we know, Abdulmutallab really did try to ignite an incendiary power mixture that had been taped to his leg.  If other reports prove reliable, then he apparently succeeded in igniting something.  Perhaps the "incendiary powder" was supposed to ignite his explosive underwear in turn.

We know from the opening paragraph that Abdulmutallab was charged with trying to bomb the airliner.  But the story leaves unclear the fact that he may well have had the means to accomplish his task save for a malfunction.  Incendiary powder does not sound particularly threatening.  Unless one takes the additional step of calling it a bomb.  Firecrackers are filled with incendiary powder.  But a firecracker set off in the cabin of a jetliner probably would not cause it to crash.

Almost a week after the incident and this is the type of detail we get?

I was able to locate one other well of information in the Times, courtesy of a story borrowed from the New York Times.

The latter newspaper took a relatively hard critical line, using the title "Questions on Why Suspect Wasn't Stopped."


The St. Petersburg Times was kinder and gentler:  "Airline security takes renewed urgency."  And if that renewed urgency includes some lax application of procedures as part of an effort to confuse potential purveyors of man-made disasters, no doubt it's all good.

In the know, baby.


Dec. 31, 2009:  Added a paragraph explaining the image of two search results.

"In the Know": Better late than never on "Climategate"

The St. Petersburg Times finally ended its relative silence on Climategate.  On Dec. 5, the Times published most of a good account appearing in The Washington Post.

Knowing that space considerations often affect how much of given story will appear in a newspaper, and being the busybody that I am, I located for readers the portion excluded from the version they would have read in the Times:

"We're simply not tracking where the heat is going," said Trenberth, who heads the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.


The diversity of opinion on this topic, however, wasn't evident late last month, when a group of 26 climate researchers issued a report called "The Copenhagen Diagnosis," summarizing scientific advances since the last major U.N. climate report in 2007.

"Has global warming recently slowed down or paused?" the report said. "No."

Those three paragraphs occurred at the end of the original Post version.

In the know, baby.

In the Know: Climategate fallout

The St. Petersburg Times updated its reporting on the Climategate scandal this week.

The story again avoids the term "Climategate" and successfully avoids giving its readers much useful information about the scandal itself.

The St. Petersburg Times ran a portion of a story from The New York Times.

The former version consists of four paragraphs and no byline.  The gist of the scandal occurs in the third paragraph:

The e-mail exchanges among several U.S. and British scientists appear to reveal efforts to keep the work of skeptical scientists out of major journals and the possible hoarding and manipulation of data to overstate the case for human-caused climate change.

That one paragraph is just about all one would know about the scandal by reading the Times.

The Pittsburg Post-Gazette published a lengthier version of the same story under John M. Broder's byline.

So who's more "In the Know" in this case?

"Critics are taking them out of context"

The St. Petersburg Times has weighed in on Climategate, albeit without using the term "Climategate."

A Friday editorial ("How not to fight climate of denial") chastises the Climate Research Unit for unnecessarily giving global warming skeptics ammunition.

Assuming the documents are genuine — the authenticity of all has not been confirmed — critics are taking them out of context and misinterpreting at least one controversial e-mail exchange. None of it seriously undercuts the scientific consensus on climate change. But a few of the documents are damaging for other reasons.

Do we get any examples of how the e-mails were taken out of context? Sadly, from the standpoint of good journalism, we do not. The Times, as of the end of the Friday editorial, has published exactly two quotations from the stolen communications. Those two quotations serve to illustrate the Times' one significant concern about the story (bold emphasis added):

According to one of the stolen e-mails, CRU director Phil Jones wrote that he would keep papers questioning the connection between warming and human activity out of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report "even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" In another, Jones and Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann write of organizing a boycott of an academic journal until it fires a "troublesome editor."

The Times has chosen a legitimate gripe. Trying to politically suppress science that reaches undesired conclusions puts scientists in a bad light. Though it should be noted that one of the editors CRU helped oust gave them an excuse by publishing a paper that may not have been up to normal journal standards. In terms of its methodology, I should add.

Refocus on the claim made by the Times, "None of it seriously undercuts the scientific consensus on climate change."

It doesn't?

The hacked information shows the scientists bewailing the problems with their computer model's codes.

The CRU is perhaps at the very leading edge of scientific global warming advocacy. If not the leader, it is one of them.

The Times has once chance to be correct at this stage: The scientists who form the consensus are so committed to the idea of global warming that having an evidential rug potentially pulled all the way out from under them will not affect their commitment to the doctrine.

If the Times is right on that score, then science takes a second hit even worse than the one the Times will acknowledge.

It is too early to say how much the data theft and release will undermine climate change science, the Times' opinion notwithstanding.

Now get to work publishing some of the interesting information, Times editors. Put your readers "In the Know."

"In the Know": Climategate

James Delingpole has a humorous roundup of responses to Climategate, the set of embarrassing e-mails hacked from servers at East Anglia's Climate Research Unit.

None of the responses came from the St. Petersburg Times, however. Despite pages of "climategate" hits through GoogleNews, a search for the term at the Times reveals nothing:

clipped from www.google.com

Your search - climategate - did not match any documents. Suggestions: Make sure all words are spelled correctly. Try different keywords. Try more general keywords.

In the know, baby.

In the Know: Setting new standard for site search efficiency ...

I chided the St. Petersburg Times for editing out all of the specific details from its AP version of the Climatic Research Center e-mail hack story.

It is a good thing I embedded the URL for that version of the story in an earlier post, or else I may never have found it again.

I challenge anyone to find the story using the Times' site search feature. And if you find it, please stop back by to tell me what search terms you used.

In the know, baby.

"In the Know": The East Anglia e-mail hack

Part of the "In the Know" series of posts.


The political right of the blogosphere quickly developed an awareness of a story concerning hacked e-mails from a major global warming research center.

The Climatic Research Center at the University of East Anglia (apparently misidentified in quite a few reports as the "Hadley" center) had its computer system hacked. Quite a few e-mails were snatched and posted on the Web. Some of the e-mail messages sound suspicious and appear to suggest that scientists at the center allowed politics to influence their presentation of science.

The Associated Press produced a story that sums up the gist of what happened and then goes on to add details.

The St. Petersburg Times ran the AP story, but edited out all of the specific details. The 16 paragraph story was cut down to the first four, though the Times version looks like five since one paragraph was made into two.

"In the Know," baby.

"In the Know" in the Times

The St. Petersburg Times continues to use "In the Know" as part of its ad campaigns. They even use it as part of a little jingle:

In the Know
In the Times
Whoa-o-o-o

Woe, indeed.

I have used "In the Know" as a tag for posts concerning Times coverage that is either AWOL or misleading.

SPT "In the Know" on Douglas Feith

My local newspaper, The St. Petersburg Times, came up with a cute little jingle some time ago. "In the know, in the Times, whoa whoa whoa whoa" or something to that effect set to music. The idea, of course, is that reading the Times gives you the information you need to know, such as the information in Douglas Feith's recent book on the manner in which decisions about the Iraq War were made.

Well, apparently not. Though the pathetic search feature at the Times cannot be discounted as part of the problem. Search for "Feith" and the most recent story mentioning Feith was from Dec. 2007, before Feith's book was published.

To its credit(?) the Times' search engine doesn't have anything this year for "McClellan" either.

In the know, baby.

St. Petersburg Times' triumvirate of terror, part 2

The St. Petersburg Times ever treads that razor thin line between fulfilling their ad jingle "In the know" and acting as a shill for the Democratic Party. An editorial from last week helps to illustrate, as it takes John McCain's economic policies to task while ignoring the problems with the ideas of his competition.

McCain's problem, according to the Times editor, is his endorsement of the Bush tax cuts while only specifically advocating cuts in earmark spending.

McCain used to be known as a fiscal conservative and deficit hawk who twice voted against President Bush's tax cuts. As the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, however, he did an about face and favors extending those tax cuts. Now he is getting squishy on deficit reduction.

Perhaps McCain realizes that increasing taxation hampers the economy. One would think that the concept does not register with the Times. As to McCain's supposed squishiness on deficit reduction, the column limits its evidence to McCain's support of the Bush tax cuts along with his advocacy of trimming corporate taxes from 35 percent down to 25 percent.

Do Times editors have any clue at all about economics?

The Arizona senator once opposed the Bush tax cuts because the benefits went mostly to the wealthy and the cuts were unaccompanied by spending reductions. He was right. That disastrous formula turned a $120-billion budget surplus into a $400-billion deficit.

One would think from the Times account above that the terrorist attack on the WTC towers had no significant effect on the national economy. For those who are historically challenged, President Clinton handed off a slowing economy to President Bush and the economic problems were dramatically magnified by the 9/11 attacks.

Four major items have affected this $388 billion deterioration in the FY 2002 budget balance estimate. The first can be related to the impact on the budget of the 2001 Federal tax package which reduced the FY 2002 surplus estimate by $33 billion. The second change relates to the events of September 11, 2001, and the associated spending increases approved by Congress. These spending increases reduced the projected FY2002 budget surplus by an additional $61 billion. The largest impact on the FY 2002 surplus is the $197 billion of negative adjustments attributable to the slowdown in the United States economy.
(Senate Fiscal Agency--.pdf)

Don't you love the way the Times allows you to be "In the know"?

Originally, President Bush advocated tax cuts because of the budget surplus (a government taking in more money than it needs to pay for its budget is gratuitously stealing from its constituents, in a sense).

After the 9/11 attacks, Bush advocated tax cuts to help stimulate the economy, and the second round of tax cuts (2003) did correspond to economic recovery in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

You can buy the Times' analysis if you forget enough history.

Now, McCain says he not only wants to extend those tax cuts beyond their 2010 expiration date, he wants to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. Those cuts would cost about $400-billion a year, and that's not counting another few billion in lost revenue from eliminating the alternative minimum tax, which McCain also promotes.

Here, the Times omits to inform its readers that cuts in corporate taxation are more likely to lead to offsetting economic growth than tax cuts to middle/lower class wage earners. In short, the tax cuts tend to result in increases in revenue that cut deeply into the estimated "cost" of the tax cut--and the tendency of the Times to assign a "cost" to tax cuts is nothing but spin. The taxpayer pays the cost of taxes. A cut in taxes reduces the cost to the taxpayer. By assigning a "cost" to the government associated with tax cuts, the story encourages the impression that the money rightfully belongs to the government.

It is true that government revenues will probably shrink with a cut in taxes, so in that sense it is fair to use the term "cost" in reference to tax cuts--but probably not the full $400 billion.

He justifies such irresponsibility as necessary to stimulate the sluggish economy. His position makes little sense. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is already flooding the economy with easy money to try to stabilize the banking system and housing market. Some 130-million rebate checks should be arriving in the mail in May. The soonest any impact from the tax cuts would be felt is in 2010, and by then the economy could have changed direction.

Here the Times is simply wrong. The economy is inseparably attached to Wall Street, and Wall Street reacts to expectation. An expectation of higher corporate taxation under a new Democrat president causes companies to lose value. They will anticipate greater difficulty maintaining profitability. For the corresponding reason, a commitment to sustain the Bush tax cuts provides a stable set of expectations in which investors can operate. That creates an immediate stabilizing effect on the economy--something one might not ever realize if one relied on the Times.

Perhaps the most dishonest position McCain staked out is how he would balance tax cuts with reduced spending. His numbers are laughable. He would end congressional earmarks. While they are wasteful, they amount to only about $18-billion a year. He would eliminate some corporate tax breaks, saving perhaps another $45-billion a year. Together those are a small fraction of lost revenue from the tax cuts.

A small fraction? Even if we assume that the Times is correct that lost revenue from tax cuts does not come back in part from increased economic activity (which is not a realistic assumption), 60/400 reduces to 15/100 or 15%. I don't think that's what most people have in mind by "small fraction." Fraction, yes. Small fraction, no. It's bigger than 1/7, for example.

Will the Times offer a critique of the Obama or Clinton economic plans, I wonder? Each wants to add billions to the federal budget (estimates for Obama hover around $300 billion, with $225 billion for Clinton).

As Presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton race toward a key electoral showdown tomorrow, updated findings from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation's (NTUF's) candidate cost analysis project show that their federal budget proposals are racing ahead as well. According to neutral data, Obama's platform would boost yearly federal spending by $307.3 billion compared to Clinton's $226.1 billion -- both measurably higher totals since NTUF began examining the candidates' plans earlier this year.
(National Taxpayers Union)

Yeah, that McCain sure is irresponsible.

Obama and Clinton will either renege on their spending promises or balloon the deficit or torch the economy with increased taxes--unless they figure out a way to accomplish more than one of the options without sacrificing the others.

"In the know"?



Corrected spelling of "National Taxpayers Union"
Added clarification to my 10th graph.

*****

St. Petersburg Times' triumvirate of terror

Without digging too deeply, I've uncovered three skewerable editorials at The St. Petersburg Times this week.

First up is an byline-less editorial that could easily pass for Robyn Blumner's work.

Titled "Bush fights science again, and we all lose," it engages in typically Blumnerian confusion about what constitutes science and combines that ignorance with a fixation on attacking Bush.

Under legal pressure to enforce the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency tightened the ozone limit from the current 84 parts per billion to 75 ppb. The new standard would quadruple the number of counties out of compliance on smog (including the Tampa Bay area) and reduce illness and deaths related to that pollution.

So far, so good. Except EPA administrator Stephen Johnson did two things that undermined the effort. First, he ruled against his own scientific advisers, who wanted to set the allowable ozone level even lower — between 60 ppb and 70 ppb. Once again the administration showed its contempt for science.

The disinformation in this piece is staggering. First, compare a story from Reuters that appears to deal with the lawsuit mentioned in the editorial:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Environmental Protection Agency toughened standards for ozone pollution on Wednesday, but these new requirements are more lax than the agency's own scientists recommended.

Stephen Johnson, the agency's chief, said he complied with the Clean Air Act and with scientific data in setting the new ozone standard at 75 parts per billion in ambient air in the United States. The previous standard was 80 parts per billion.

(Reuters)

The Times has 84 parts per billion while the Reuters story mentioned 80 ppb as the standard. Reuters, from what I can tell, is the more technically correct. Compliance with the 80ppb standard is measured according to 84 ppb. No, I'm not kidding.

The U.S. EPA’s primary (for health protection) and secondary (for environmental and welfare protection) 8-hr ozone standards both are 80 ppb. In determining attainment and nonattainment, however, the U.S. EPA must use rounding. As a result, we consider ozone values ≤84 ppb as meeting the standard.
(Hubbell, Hallberg, McCubbin & Post)

Other than quibbling over the numbers, what's my problem with the editorial?

Two things.

First, the editorial is blindly one-sided. The Heritage Foundation has supplied a critique of the proposed 70-75 ppb standard that offers much more information than the Times ("In the know") editorial. Here's a taste of the conclusion:

It is appropriate for the EPA to consider the public health risks associated with ground-level ozone. However, the EPA should consider the tradeoffs involved in making the current standard stricter. Like reducing the speed limit to 15 miles per hour, it might save more lives but would come with extremely high economic costs.
(heritage.org)

Second, the charge that the EPA's decision amounts to fighting science displays either a lack of understanding of science or a tendency toward misleadingly hyperbolic rhetoric--and either should be a concern coming from the editorial board of a newspaper calling itself one of the 10 best in the nation.

Science makes no prescriptive statements. Prescriptive statements fall outside the domain of science, which observes nature and tries to provide an understanding of nature based on the development of a system of laws that allow for accurate predictions. As such, it is complete nonsense to say that the administration is fighting science. It's fair to say that the administration did not accept the advice of the EPA's scientists, but that should only cause an outcry if the cost/benefit analysis is clear-cut in favor of the full reduction. The Heritage Foundation addressed the cost/benefit analysis. The St. Petersburg Times engaged in hysterical rhetoric without addressing the cost/benefit analysis.

If The St. Peterburg Times is one of the 10 best newspapers in the United States then the editorial board either has little to do with it or else we're all in a heap of trouble.

*****

Eyes shut tight, they make their recommendations

The St. Petersburg Times has pretty much always irked me with its liberal slant--a slant that routinely escapes from the editorial pages to infect the news writing.

Last year, I had an opportunity to sit in on an editorial board meeting.

It was no less liberal than I expected, with Robyn Blumner and Bill Maxwell providing the most outstanding examples of left-tilted fulmination.

This time, it's one of the Times' byline-less editorials that caught my eye. Let's say I expect that Blumner's hand was in this one (high Bushes-per-paragraph rate one of the telltale signs).

Fresh on the heels of Gen. Petraeus' testimony, the Times' editors give their opinion of the Iraq War and give us a window into their view of Iraqis.

We strongly come down on the side of those, including a majority of the American people, who believe it's time to start winding down the war and for the United States to put the responsibility for that miserable country's future where it belongs, in the hands of the Iraqi people and their leaders.
(St. Petersburg Times)

Skipping past the Sir Robinesque beginning (let's bravely run away, away!) with their "strong" stand for withdrawal, the disdain for Iraq is plain. Iraq is a "miserable" country (don't bother contacting the SPT ombudsman--all they were saying, we'd hear, was that Iraq is war-torn and anyway that's Bush's fault), and saving Iraqi lives isn't worth spending American lives.

The editors appear to have no perspective on Iraq in terms of world events and the balance of power.

If there were ever any doubts, Bush's speech made it clear that he has no strategy for ending this war, much less winning it.

No examples forthcoming, I note. Did Bush's speech dispel my notion that the war is won when the central Iraqi government can maintain itself and remain an ally of the United States?

The premise of our strategy is that securing the Iraqi population is the foundation for all other progress. For Iraqis to bridge sectarian divides, they need to feel safe in their homes and neighborhoods. For lasting reconciliation to take root, Iraqis must feel confident that they do not need sectarian gangs for security. The goal of the surge is to provide that security and to help prepare Iraqi forces to maintain it. As I will explain tonight, our success in meeting these objectives now allows us to begin bringing some of our troops home.
(Newsday.com)

Looks like a strategy, particularly combined withe counterinsurgency tactics that Petraeus was tabbed to implement. But what do I know? Shouldn't I simply trust the SPT to put me "In the Know"? Impart to us thy great wisdom, St. Petersburg Times.

Bush revealed none of their doubts in his speech to the nation.

Sure he did. He just did it implicitly, by acknowledging that victory isn't a foregone conclusion and by acknowledging that the Iraqi government needed to start meeting some goals.

Realizing this vision will be difficult, but it is achievable. Our military commanders believe we can succeed. Our diplomats believe we can succeed. And for the safety of future generations of Americans, we must succeed.

If the commanders and diplomats thought that success was assured, then Bush would be saying "Our military commanders know we will succeed" or the like.

He maintained that enough military progress has been made to justify continuing his policy, even though by his own standard the troop surge has failed.

I wasn't aware that the benchmarks were all slated to come due in September, a mere two months after the full complement of forces arrived in Iraq to implement the new strategy.

While our strategic goal requires a long-term relationship with Iraq, we are at a new phase in the effort and must sharpen the objectives we believe are achievable in the next 12-18 months.

The above came from a presentation accompanying the original announcement of the surge by Bush, preceding a list of eight goals.

He told the nation last spring the surge's goal was to give the Iraqi government more time to bring about political reconciliation. That hasn't happened

Not soon enough for the Times to call it over and done, anyway. The editorial goes right on to claim that Bush predicts a likely victory in his speech. That's simply inaccurate, from what I can glean.

Good luck being "In the Know" if you rely on the St. Petersburg Times.

D'oh, I forget to point out one of the most hilarious things about the editorial. It assures us that we need to change course in Iraq--the sooner the better. Change course to what? Apparently it doesn't matter, and requires no discussion.

"In the Know." Whatever.

*****

The St. Petersburg Times braces for Petraeus

No, they're not expecting a late-season hurricane.

Seeing word that the New York Times is disparaging progress in Iraq leading up to General David Petraeus' address to Congress and various committees thereof, I decided to see to what extent I would be "In the Know" thanks to the St. Petersburg Times.

The Sunday story, authored by Wes Allison, avoids any direct assessment of ground conditions in Iraq. Instead, Allison paints the situation in terms of the political debate. Republicans will argue for continuing the surge, rolling the dice despite the unpopularity of the effort, while the Democrats will soften their efforts to set a withdrawal timetable.

The story itself seems political.

Allison throws in some cues to tip off the anti-war crowd that he doesn't necessarily buy the idea that the surge is working--though he does report the reversal of Democrat Brian Baird, who now favors continuing the surge. Positives in terms of security, as well as the negatives in terms of Iraqi politics, are not delivered as objective news, but in terms of the claims of the factions in Washington.

I do give Allison some credit, however. I don't see any unmistakable sign that he dismisses the conservative side of the debate as inherently untenable.

As-is, the story seems crafted to leave unchallenged the thinking of readers regarding the actual situation in Iraq. More importantly, it doesn't touch at all on the consequences for failure in Iraq. That's a bit strange, considering it's the answer to the question Allison chooses to provide the introduction to his story:

Who knew that opposing an unpopular war could be so difficult?
(St. Petersburg Times, read the rest for yourself)

I could have told him that way back in November. If you're a congressional Democrat, you need a plan that doesn't sound stupid, and one that leaves you relatively free of blame if a genocide results in Iraq.

The Democrats have no plan. They're sticking with what got them elected: Criticize Republicans for whatever goes wrong.