Has The Sequester Muted The Government’s Media Mojo?
Sequestration—the federal budget cuts agreed to by both the Congress and the White House way back in 2011—is off to a rocky start, judging from the drenching storms of skepticism raining down on the president and members of Congress from all media quarters. Just one week after the $85 billion in cuts have gone into effect, pundits and bloggers, anchors and reporters are furiously transmitting tales of the rising national boil over what is shaping up to be a quagmire of mishandled messaging and questionable choices by the administration and legislators.
Whatever media coin Mr. Obama and Congress thought they might have stashed away (or sequestered) for such a rainy day, it is by now a depleted, if not completely overdrawn account in light of line-by-line analysis by the media of all the dire claims which at times have verged on the apoplectic and the apocalyptic.
It doesn’t make any difference what government spokespersons are selling these days; when it comes to tales of fiscal gloom and doom, the media has stopped buying. And, as the Dayton Daily News reports, the public isn’t far behind.
School teachers are getting pink-slipped? Nope. Shuttered control towers will lead to air traffic control disasters? Nope. Defense cuts will place our national security at risk? Nope. Famine, pestilence and locusts? George Will says “Nope.” White House tours cancelled? Well, yes, actually that one is true. And how ridiculous that is was covered by Paul Roderick Gregory of Forbes, who worked out that the cost of ushering visitors through 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is equal to two hours of flight time for Air Force One.
The government’s post-election, post-fiscal-cliff waltz with the media has become a paso doble, with elected officials of both parties unsure as to which role—bull fighter or the bull—they have taken on. The media, however, knows exactly which costume to wear—swirling its First Amendment cape and attacking El Toro relentlessly, stabbing every assertion that the effects of sequestration will bring America to its knees if left unchecked.
Neil Munro of the Daily Caller says the media is pushing back against the White House’s anxiety-raising claims. CNNMoney takes on the myths of the spending cuts; John Schoen of NBC brings economists’ doubts to the public forum; Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, characterizes Obama as “Dr. Doom;” and the ever-skeptical Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann say sequestration isn’t even about the money…it’s just about a taking a meat cleaver to government.
Perhaps Richard Benedetto of USA Today said it best when he zeroed in on the magnetism of the hype and the media’s need to step back and look at the bigger picture. “We in the news media are vulnerable to dramatic stories of people being hurt by forces over which they have little control… Skepticism in the original reports is just as important as follow-up a week later.”
As true as that may be, it is of little consolation to Waverly, Iowa’s, sixth-graders whose visions of a White House visit were blown down by the capricious and false wind of sequestration jitters that slammed closed the doors of the Executive Mansion while picking up the tab for a motorcade for the president’s dinner date with congressional Republicans. Sorry, kids. You’ll just have to go online for that much-hoped-for tour.
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