Opening paragraph from an article in today’s NYT:
“Facing a record budget deficit, Bush administration officials say they have drafted an election-year budget that will rein in the growth of domestic spending without alienating politically influential constituencies.”
Link to entire article:
I don’t have any problem with the NYT incidentally observing as a matter of historical fact that the announced budget comes in an election year or that the budget itself does not severely disfavor some politically influential segments of the populace. Nor would I mind if the Times integrated into an account of what officials actually announced some “analysis” that sought to draw some connection between these circumstances. But unless the Bush administration officials themselves expressly characterized the package as “an election year budget” or explicitly identified “avoiding the alienation of politically influential constituencies” as one of its purposes or effects, is it really fair to report that those same officials “said” as much?
Could not the same points be made far more fairly like this:
“Facing a record budget deficit, Bush administration officials say they have drafted budget that will rein in the growth of domestic spending. The proposed budget, coming as it does in an election year, seeks to achieve the announced objective without alienating politically influential constituencies”?
I wish to emphasize that my concern is not over the inclusion of “insight” in a news report, but over its misattribution.