Yesterday, I watched Robert Mak on Up Front trying to explain the state's budget problems using 29 pennies. Seriously. And he had used the same trick earlier on a King 5 news program. Unsuccessfully, both times.
Now I have some sympathy for TV producers' reluctance to use charts. TV screens have too low resolution for anything except the simplest charts. (That's a little less true at the new, higher resolutions, but producers can not assume that all their viewers have the new sets.) And many viewers are turned off by charts. But it is almost impossible to discuss a budget usefully without using charts (or tables, which are even harder to show on TV).
There must be someone at King 5 who can make a few simple bar charts. (Which would be enough to show the budget basics.) Perhaps not on the news side, but certainly on the business side.
Which charts? To begin with, even though he is a lefty, Robert Mak should have enough journalistic integrity to show viewers how revenue and spending have grown during the last decade. (These are simple charts to make; even an amateur like me could produce one in a hour or two.) Then, a chart showing how pay for public employees has grown during the same period. That might require a little research, but King 5 could probably get someone in Olympia to give him that data.
There are others that would be useful. Feel free to suggest some, as long as you keep in mind the limited space on a TV screen.
(Finally, a suggestion to Amber Gunn of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. Next time Mak interviews you, bring your own simple charts, suitable for display on TV. When he asks you a question that can be best answered with a chart, pull one out.)
Posted by Jim Miller at December 13, 2010 09:01 AM | Email ThisI'd also like to see a chart of Washington's deficit performance during Gregoire's two terms.
And a chart of light rails ridership as a percentage of total Puget Sound commutes, along with road traffic growth and spending on light rail transit vs. spending on roads all over the past ten years.
Posted by: Jeff B. on December 13, 2010 01:07 PMOh, and what about those two pennies for the Seattle Tunnel...or is it three, or four, or eight...with "cost overruns" that all of WA state will have to pay for!
If you have a suggestion for me in the future, feel free to send me an email. I find it odd that you didn't.
Also, I spent over an hour with Robert. I have no control over which clips were chosen by King 5 producers. It just so happened that I did have charts with me, but they chose not to use them. That, of course, is their prerogative. Here is one we have been using showing the growth of government spending compared to inflation and population: http://www.effwa.org/files/pdf/GrowthofGov.pdf
I actually think Robert's explanation using the pennies showed a lot of progress in the way the press is communicating the state's budget problems to the public. He showed that the state will, in fact, receive more money for the next budget, and that government's "expenses" for the next budget amount to a 25% increase in government spending. Most people don't understand that, but his example simplified it, and broke down the increased costs so that people could see that a lot of them are the result of bad choices in that past that have pushed costs forward rather than eliminated them.
Posted by: Amber Gunn on December 13, 2010 06:23 PMIf you have a suggestion for me in the future, feel free to send me an email. I find it odd that you didn't.
Also, I spent over an hour with Robert. I have no control over which clips were chosen by King 5 producers. It just so happened that I did have charts with me, but they chose not to use them. That, of course, is their prerogative. Here is one we have been using showing the growth of government spending compared to inflation and population: http://www.effwa.org/files/pdf/GrowthofGov.pdf
I actually think Robert's explanation using the pennies showed a lot of progress in the way the press is communicating the state's budget problems to the public. He showed that the state will, in fact, receive more money for the next budget, and that government's "expenses" for the next budget amount to a 25% increase in government spending. Most people don't understand that, but his example simplified it, and broke down the increased costs so that people could see that a lot of them are the result of bad choices in that past that have pushed costs forward rather than eliminated them.
Posted by: Amber Gunn on December 13, 2010 06:24 PM