WSJ’s “two stories” opinion page

There’s an intriguing “how’s that again?” moment on today’s Wall Street Journal Opinion page.  First, start at the top: In his column, headlined “The Real AIG Disgrace, ” Holman Jenkins, Jr. begins his defense of the American International Group bonus payments in the face of widespread outrage by noting

There is not a shread of justice in the hysteria that followed.  As AIG chief Ed Liddy explained on the Hill last week, the people receiving retention bonuses were not the same people who launched AIG’s unhedged housing bets...

All clear so far?

Not so fast.  In the next column down (“The ‘Populists’ Are Right About Wall Street”) Thomas Frank asks:

Why did the Treasury Department allow the payout of many millions in bonuses to executives of the unit that sank the company?

Hey, wait a minute..!

One would think that, after almost a month of sound and fury, hours of television time, thousands of column inches of newspaper coverage and a Congressional investigation, everyone  would know exactly which groups of AIG executives were on track for bonuses.  But there appears to be some confusion in the Journal’s opinion department.

Or perhaps not.  Frank very carefully says “executives of the same unit.”  What he does not say is “the same executives.”

Now I know the standards for opinion writing are (supposed to be) different from those of pure reporting.  If it’s opinion, personal disparagement, exaggeration, and loaded language are all part of the tools.  But when a writer shades the truth, or omits relevant facts just because they don’t agree with his position, this reader is going to call him out of bounds.  It’s like the witness who tells the court, “I didn’t hear anything,” but fails to mention that the reason he didn’t hear anything was because he was playing Grand Theft Auto with headphones on and the volume turned up.  In this case, Frank’s construction, while true (in the sense of “not false”), leads the reader to the (mistaken) conclusion that the people slated for the next round of bonuses are the same ones who killed the company.  Great for stoking populist fervor, but unfair to the audience, and not strictly true.^[1]

A newspaper column shouldn’t have to be parsed like a contract.  Lawyer tricks with language only reduce the writer’s credibility.  And if those storied “multiple layers of editors” allow those tricks to make it into print, it’s the entire publication that suffers.

Two stories make a great house.  But when it comes to facts, “two stories” isn’t what I want from my newspaper.


UPDATE 090325 17:00:  So, Mr. Frank, was stoking the fires of populist fervor a good idea or not (especially since, thanks to the bailouts, â€œwe” now own 80% of the company)?
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Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 16:31:20 GMT | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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