A news article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on the chances that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. will be forced to sell the New York Post. The article twice identifies as a "public interest group" a group that opposes Murdoch's purchase of a chain of television stations. There are plenty of Americans who think that allowing Mr. Murdoch to buy the stations is in the public interest. The "public interest group" in question files lawsuits and intervenes in regulatory matters according to a pattern that generally favors more government restrictions on private businesses. The Times may be of the opinion that this constitutes the public interest, but the article at hand is a news story, not an editorial. And it's funny how the Times hardly ever describes conservative think tanks or litigation groups as acting in the "public interest."
Smartertimes.com pointed this out on March 27, 2001, with respect to another Times article that referred to a liberal advocacy group as a "public interest group," and the Times news desk circulated that Smartertimes.com item to the Times news department on April 4, 2001 as part of its internal "Best of the Greenies" publication. A Times editor scrawled below the reference in question in that case, "Better to call this an 'advocacy group.'" It's hard to see what the point of circulating those sort of memos to the newspaper's staff is if the staff is going to respond by ignoring the memos and simply repeating the error of identifying liberal advocacy groups as "public interest" groups.
The same article from today's Times reports that "The News Corporation's acquisition of Chris-Craft has been opposed by the institute, the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and other groups that contend it would reduce diversity in media ownership." It's just amusing that the Times is still taking seriously the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition's opposition to corporate mergers. Just about every other news organization in the country, from the Los Angeles Times to the Washington Post and the Chicago Sun-Times, has by now figured out that this is a ploy. The pattern is that the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition receives "donations" from the corporation seeking approval for the merger and then subsequently drops its opposition to the merger. In this case, the ploy may not even be that sophisticated; Rev. Jackson may just be retaliating for the tough coverage he has been receiving from New York Post columnist Rod Dreher. The Times article gives no indication at all that the newspaper is aware of these issues or patterns. It just takes the Rev. Jesse Jackson's opposition to the merger wholly at face value. (Disclosure: The New York Post occasionally pays Smartertimes.com for the right to reprint excerpts from Smartertimes.com on its editorial page.)
Late Again: The New York Times metro section carries on its front page today an article about the fact that Ellis Island passenger lists are now available on the Internet. That's old news to readers of the Los Angeles Times, which carried a full feature on the same topic yesterday.
Edge Cities: A front-page article in today's New York Times brings in the stunning news that some suburbs are getting denser and turning into cities. This is shown by data from the 2000 census, the Times reports. Funny how the Times manages to write this article without ever once using the phrase "Edge City" or referring to the 1991 book by that name by Joel Garreau. And it's funny how Mr. Garreau managed to notice that this was going on, and get a book into print about it, fully a decade before the Times waddled in with its report based on census data. The Times report is not particularly satisfying, because it focuses on population density and doesn't tell readers much about commercial and retail development in the suburbs.
Arsenic in the Water: Two news articles in today's New York Times refer to the Bush administration's decision on "the amount of naturally occurring arsenic that would be allowed in municipal drinking water." The standard in question would apply to all arsenic, naturally occurring or otherwise. One Times article notes that "the mining industry" opposed a tougher standard, which might be a tip to an intelligent editor that "naturally occurring" arsenic isn't the only thing at issue.
Profit Margin: A graph that runs with the continuation of an article in today's New York Times about a Pennsylvania hospital purports to show the "profit margin" of hospitals, as a national average. This information is essentially meaningless, because a national average combines the results of for-profit hospitals, which aim to maximize profits, with those of non-profit and government-run hospitals. Non-profits don't have "profits," they have deficits or surpluses, which may be the result of charitable donations. Instead of creating "profits" they pay out the extra money in compensation to executives (to take a cynical view) or use it for better patient care (to take a charitable view). Government-run hospitals often try to avoid having surpluses; if they ran surpluses, their budgets might get cut for the next year. The whole system is so distorted by perverse incentives created by the heavily regulated nature of the health care industry that it is really meaningless to speak of an average "profit margin" for the hospital industry a whole, or to compare the "profit margin" of a government-run hospital to an average that includes non-profits and for-profits, as the Times graph does.