NYT Invents "Important Threshold" To Scare Readers About Social Security

[babylonsister]

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=03&year=2010&base_name=nyt_invents_important_threshol

NYT Invents "Important Threshold" To Scare Readers About Social Security


A front page NYT story noted that Social Security benefit payments this year exceed its tax collections. As both the experts cited in the article pointed out, this fact makes absolutely no difference for the program since it holds more than $2.5 trillion in government bonds.

In spite of the statements by the experts cited in the article, the second paragraph told readers that this event marked: "an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office." Nothing in the article or in the structure of the program suggests that there is any importance whatsoever to this threshold.

--Dean Baker

[madrchsod]

1. newspapers used to have "fact checkers" and editors that checked articles

i guess the newspaper decided that was to expensive.