The Times today ran an article about the current budget battles in my home state of Minnesota. Headlined, "A Tenuous Legislative Consensus in Minnesota Has Collapsed Over Tax Increases," the gist of the article is simple: voters chose a middle way in the last elections, and now those crazy DFLers (as Democrats are called here) are messing things up by proposing a bunch of tax increases. Oh, and thank goodness, the Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, is vetoing everything and the voters love him for it. Only problem is, as you might have already guessed, the Times' narrative is utter hogwash. More below the fold....
The reporter, Kirk Johnson, writes:
[Gov.] Pawlenty...has seen his popularity soar recently, with a 55 percent approval rating earlier this month as he stood up to the Legislature, according to a poll by Minnesota Public Radio.
Well. I presume that Johnson is referring to this poll, which does in fact show a 55% approval rating. It also shows, however, that 72% of voters support the DFL plan to raise taxes on the rich to pay for property tax decreases! The headline of the article on MPR's website is "High approval marks for Pawlenty, but most wish he would raise taxes on the rich." Apparently the Times' reporter only managed to read up to the comma, because these findings are nowhere to be found in the entire article.
The article cites the Tax Foundation (approvingly) on the inadvisability of raising gasoline taxes when gas prices are so high, but makes no mention of another poll which showed that a majority (admittedly, just barely) of Minnesotans are willing to pay another nickel for gas to fund badly needed transportation initiatives. It also does not cite more progressive think tanks (the Tax Foundation is primarily a corporate, pro-growth outfit which generally opposes tax increases), like perhaps this one, which shows that Minnesota's taxes have been getting less progressive, with lower earners paying more proportionally than the rich.
It is clear that the reporter approached this story with his biases front and center-- as usual in MSM circles, the elusive political center is the end-all and be-all, and rabble-rousing leftists are the bad guys. But to cite a poll which found two things: decent approval ratings for the Governor (55%), and overwhelming support for the main DFL tax proposal (72%), and to mention only one of these findings in your article? Wow. That's breathtakingly bad journalism.
I've already written my LTE about this. Other Minnesotans might want to consider it too: letters@nytimes.com