-
David Cay Johnston commented on the diary post Sunday Talk Shows: Making America Dumber One Week at a Time by Scarecrow.
Thanks for the kind words, but I am not an economist, just a journalist who writes about economics.
-
David Cay Johnston wrote a new diary post: Really Bad Reporting on Wisconsin Protest Issues
Economic nonsense is being reported as fact in most of the news reports on the Wisconsin dispute, the product of a breakdown of skepticism among journalists multiplied by their lack of understanding of basic economic principles. Gov. Scott Walker says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to “contribute more” to their pension [...]
-
David Cay Johnston commented on the blog post One Reason We Don’t Hear about Income Inequality: Media Execs Among the Richest
In re your post on my column:
The data were posted at 8:30 AM on Oct 15. My column for Tax Notes, a nonadvertising nonprofit that produces about 100 pages of tax journalism each week, runs every other week so my column came out on Oct 25 and was put in front of the subscriber pay wall at my request.
Even though I had to wait 10 days to get into print I was not worried that anyone would scoop me.
As my column notes, no reporter, economist or blogs or citizen journalist has used this data, my searches of Google and Nexis databases show.
I offered an exclusive about my report late the previous week to all three networks, the big three cable news channels and various major newspapers, including two where I once worked. No one was interested, including shows that have had me on in the past (Fox and CNN) and have had me on lately (NPR and MSNBC).
This was just the latest in a long line of stories I have broken about the official data that get no coverage because no one “announced” the data.
Indeed, one TV producer asked me, “who announced this,” saying no press release seemed to be on the web. I said it was posted at a government website as it is each year with no announcement, just like the 400 highest income taxpayer data I write about each year that also gets no announcement, just a posting.
I was then asked who did the analysis that was in my emailed pitch. I said I did. The producer lost all interest at this point, an indication of how much of the competitive news world I spent 40 years in has become a regurgitation of handouts business, with a some very notable exceptions. Unless someone official announces it is just not news, even from someone with all the bona fides I have.
Bloomberg, an excellent source of accurate and often penetrating news, did carry a report by its highly competent tax reporter, Ryan J. Donmoyer, who learned his craft at Tax Notes, about my column.
Among major papers only the LATimes (in Tim Rutten’s column) and the WashPost (in a brief on Page A11 from the Bloomberg piece) have told their readers any of the numbers in my column. Some provincials like the generally excellent Seattle Times, did put the Bloomberg story about my column on Page One.
The reason I did not put the URL in my column was to see if anyone would ask for it.
In the past I have cited the Medicare tax database and no one, even people who wrote at length about my work, asked for exactly where the data came from.
Oh, and by the way, its Johnston, not Johnson.
There will be more on this in the third book in my bestselling series on how the economy really works, taking from the many in the last three decades to enrich the few. THE FINE PRINT will be out next year.
The column on the payroll data is still available free, along with some of my other columns, at tax.com
David Cay Johnston
