Not too long ago, the Drudge Report linked to a story from an Indian news service estimating the tab for President Obama’s 10-day Asian trip at $200 million per day. Rep. Michele Bachmann and others eagerly spread the figure to score partisan points.
Wednesday, Drudge linked to this Foxnews.com story reporting a U.S. military estimate that it now costs $181,757 per hour to operate Air Force One. “Staggering,” Fox calls the estimated cost, first published in a report released earlier this week by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF).
Buried seven paragraphs deep in its 10-paragraph length, the Fox story quotes the report’s author, NTUF senior policy analyst Demian Brady, calling the earlier estimate that the Asian trip cost taxpayers $200 million per day “wildly exaggerated.”
$181,757 per hour to fly Air Force One is a lot — maybe even “staggering.” I’m not sure of that. But I am sure that that estimated cost is not as staggeringly large as the earlier estimated daily cost of the Asian trip — $200 million per day — was staggeringly wrong.
Does “wild” do justice to the exaggeration involved in that earlier figure?
Multiplying the hourly rate for Air Force One by the 48 hours of flying time during the president’s trip to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan, Brady came up with an estimated $8.7 million bill for flying Air Force One during the 10-day tour. The total cost of the trip based on the Drudge/Bachmann number would have been $2 billion. In other words, the reliably estimated cost of flying Air Force One would have represented less than one half of one percent of the total cost of the trip, as estimated in the Drudge/Bachmann number. (That, of course, would be a staggeringly good deal on presidential air travel.) Or, think of it this way: Subtracting $8.7 million from $2 billion means a little over $1.991 billion — $199.1 million per day — in taxpayer dollars would have been spent on — what? — hotel rooms and per diems for the traveling entourage, communications, local travel, host government reimbursements and miscellaneous costs? Are there significant cost categories I’m missing?
My point here isn’t to impugn motives, to insist that Matt Drudge or Michele Bachmann is capable of deception. It’s to question whether they’re capable of elementary critical thought. (And, conservative Republicans, ask yourself, who is hurt more by conservative leaders who don’t think critically: partisan Democrats or conservative Republicans?)
It’s one thing to get a number wrong. It’s quite another when a leading news source or marquee political figure trumpets a figure that gets the number of digits in a (rounded) number wrong; it suggests a weak cognitive link somewhere along the information supply chain.
Of course, Matt Drudge is no dummy. He can think. But can the medium he dominates think? Sometimes — too often — it can’t. Too often, web journalism — and the larger political media culture that subsists on it — can’t think, simply because it moves faster than the speed of thought.
If traditional journalism is the first draft of history, then web journalism is the first draft of journalism. What’s the rationale here, the campaign slogan? Read the first draft of journalism, because traditional journalism is only going to be rewritten by historians anyway? Read the first draft of journalism, and give a media critic a job? The first draft of journalism: Instant news … and worth the wait?
If we have too little time to wait around until raw information gets processed into something resembling journalism, then how can we afford to waste so much of it consuming bad information?
Daniel Wattenberg’s recent articles include an essay in the December issue of Playboy on the impending political marginalization of the NRA and an expose in the August issue of Reason on the scapegoating of basketball star Gilbert Arenas. He is blogging at www.danielwattenberg.com.