President Bush yesterday announced the names of the members of the President's Council on Bioethics. Today's New York Times deals with this news by reprinting a dispatch from the Associated Press under the headline "Bush Picks Members of Advisory Panel on Bioethical Issues." The eight-paragraph long AP dispatch names not a single one of the members of the council whose names were announced yesterday. If a reader wants to find out who the members of the panel are, he could read the Washington Post, which has a staff-written news story that reports, "Among the other conservative voices on the council are Francis Fukuyama of Johns Hopkins University; James Q. Wilson of the University of California at Los Angeles; Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer (who several months ago called for Kass to be named surgeon general); and Princeton theologian Robert P. George, who has said that, when it comes to such things as the integrity of Christian doctrine, 'there is, I'm afraid, an "us" and a "them." ' But a few members carry more liberal credentials -- including Rebecca Dresser of the Washington University School of Law -- and there are high-powered scientists on board, including Janet D. Rowley of the University of Chicago and neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga of Dartmouth." Or a reader could consult the New York Times Company's Boston-based cash cow, the Globe, which reports, that two of the panel's members are from Harvard University: "Mary Ann Glendon is a law school professor and a scholar on human rights, family, and abortion law. Glendon, who once described embroyo research as 'morally repugnant,' has held lay positions in the Roman Catholic Church, which strongly opposes human cloning. Michael Sandel, a professor of government at Harvard, has written extensively about the impact social change has on communities and civic values." The Globe reports, "The panel also includes Charles Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist in Washington who is a psychiatrist; Gilbert Meilaender, a conservative Lutheran theologian from Indiana; James Q. Wilson, a UCLA political scientist who coauthored a book with Kass on the dangers of cloning; Stephen Carter, a law professor at Yale; Michael Gazzaniga, a brain researcher at Dartmouth College; Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, a professor of metaphysics and moral philosophy at Georgetown University; and Dr. Janet Rowley, a professor of medicine, cell biology, and genetics at the University of Chicago." It sure looks like the Times got caught flat-footed on this story compared to the Boston Globe and the Washington Post.
One-Sided: A dispatch from Washington in the national section of today's New York Times runs under the headline, "U.S. Plans to Delay Requirement That Utilities Cut Emissions." True to form, the Times article quotes a representative of an environmental group and an anonymous Democratic congressional aide who oppose the Bush administration's decision, but there is no quote from anyone representing utilities or from anyone representing consumers concerned that the utilities might pass along to them the costs of the changes necessary to decrease emissions.
One-Sided: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports that "With tax revenue declining because of the faltering economy and unemployment rates rising, Gov. George Pataki has joined governors from around the country in seeking increased federal aid for welfare assistance." The article quotes two state welfare officials and two officials of the National Governors' Association. All four seem to support the idea of the federal government shipping more money to the states for welfare. The Times article reports that "The governors are likely to meet resistance in Washington, where lawmakers are warning that the arrival of budget deficits will make it nearly impossible to meet the broad array of needs nationally, from health care to domestic security." If this "resistance" is so likely, how come the Times couldn't find at least one such resister to quote in order to balance out the four voices in the article calling for more federal welfare spending? If the paper found one, the argument the resister might have made could have been something like, "We've kept federal welfare spending to states roughly steady as the welfare rolls nationwide have plummeted from 12.9 million recipients six years ago to 5.4 million recipients today. In addition, over the past decade we've dramatically increased spending on the earned-income tax credit, another way of redistributing money to the poor. So now that the welfare rolls are headed up again -- to maybe the 6.5 million range -- the states want more money? That's ridiculous. If they showed up in 1996 and said, 'we're expecting half as many people to need welfare, could you please increase our budget?' we'd have laughed in their face. Why should the situation now be any different? It's the equivalent of a newspaper whose circulation went from 1 million in 1996 to 500,000 in 2002, and that has kept the prices it charges advertisers the same through the entire period, going to the advertisers and saying, 'we're expecting our circulation to increase to 550,000, and we are going to ask you to pay more for your advertising space as a result.'" The Times doesn't have to endorse this view, but it would be nice if once in a while it were included instead of being ignored.