There is No Spoon

[RogerFGay]

There is No Spoon (http://www.fathermag.com/cgi-bin/scrape.cgi?http://www.geocities.com/rogerfgay/FatherMag/spoon.htm)

The story of Jayson Blair, who made up stories for the New York Times, caused me to reflect on the "deadbeat dad" propaganda campaign that was especially intense during the early 1990s. The motives and intentional lies in that campaign were much more sinister and led to much greater damage than anything that was likely contemplated by Mr. Blair. Unlike Mr. Blair, the "deadbeat dad" propagandists have not yet been exposed by the mainstream media. Their legacy lives on.

complete article (http://www.fathermag.com/cgi-bin/scrape.cgi?http://www.geocities.com/rogerfgay/FatherMag/spoon.htm)

[**DONOTDELETE**]

As early as the 1970s, major news organizations were trimming their costs by eliminating investigative reporters and support staff. By the 1990s, it didn't take a huge conspiracy for the vast majority of reporters to get a major news story completely wrong in the same way. It was cheeper for retail news outlets to buy news from a wholesale provider. Organizations like API, covered major issues like child support with a single and very busy reporter. Everyone else just copied.

Too busy to do any serious investigative reporting, wholesale news writers quickly transformed limited source opinion into articles that appeared to have been investigated. Child support stories were often backed by press releases from Congressional offices, collection agencies, or feminist groups. A single press package could contain statements from several individuals and organizations supporting the same view. Arguments in favor of one position would be presented as fact by wholesale writers, who used quotes from the same press package to bolster the story.

The vast majority of reporters were simply repeating what was handed to them. At times, wholesale articles were simply published as is. Many articles were produced by superficial modification of the wholesale article, just enough to change the by-line.

No one was seriously trying to understand what was really meant by the words they received. A good example is the evidence provided by the U.S. Office of Child Support Enforcement that "collections" had increased as a result of the enforcement program. The percent of what is ordered that is paid never increased. In fact, it has decreased in recent years. The government had been busy enrolling more people in their program, many of whom were good regular payers. But they labeled all payments made through their program the same way – as "collections." What was universally characterized as a policy success was actually nothing more than the fruitless expansion of a worthless and expensive big government program.

Something similar happened in the research community. There are no great academic institutions of child support or universities competing on fundamental child support research. Single source opinion traveled through a small fraction of the research community and beyond like a virus. For quite some time, virtually no one else had sufficient interest or funding to argue.

Great observation, Roger, and one that I have been guessing at for years as nothing seemed to make sense when one watched an event live and then saw the news coverage of it later.

Keep up the good work, kind sir.