Rossputin.com Rational Thinking About Our World

see: http://www.socialsecurity.org/press/releases/05-11-05r.html

Although claims of “liberal media bias” are often red herrings, media coverage of the debate over Social Security reform leaves newspapers in particular wide open to such charges.

The obvious cases of bias involve how a story is reported, but in this case newspapers are abandoning their responsibilities by simply ignoring the pro-personal accounts side of the debate.

A recent petition, signed by 450 economists including 5 Nobel Laureates, calls for personal accounts based on economic arguments, while also noting the Supreme Court ruling which clarifies that Social Security is neither investment nor insurance nor any sort of contract.

Yet because this petition is against the inherent economic biases of most newspapers editorial boards as well as the fact that it was organized by the libertarian Cato Institute, it gets no column space in the major media other than as a paid advertisement.

On the other hand, searching major newspapers’ web sites for some combination of “economist”, “Social Security” and “personal accounts” yields such inanity as describing how a Nobel-winning economist doesn’t allocate his investment portfolio exactly the way that his research suggests he should.

Getting 450 economists from around the country to agree that personal accounts are a good idea is one of the most newsworthy events so far in the Social Security reform debate.

I don’t like the term “liberal media bias” because it’s so overused as to be trite, but in this case I can find no other reason for the lack of coverage of such an important development.