"Unbiased" FOX Nation

FOX claims that its new web site, FOX Nation, is "unbiased." Is it? A smattering of its front page headlines:

• Taliban Copies Democrat [sic] Playbook
  
• [Obama] Spent 20 Years With Wright but Won't Celebrate Nat'l Prayer Day?
  
• Has Obama Declared War on American Business?
  
• 100 Days, 100 Mistakes
  
• Your Democratic Scandal Scoreboard
  
• Is Obama Targeting Catholics?

Hmmm. I don't see any bias there, do you? But here's my current favorite:

(While you're looking at that, check out the rest of the unbiased headlines.)

Anyway, "Obama To Cut Slain Officers Programs in Half". What an outrage! No, no, not the missing apostrophe. Obama is cutting benefits to the families of dead cops! Why, that's disgusting!

Except that he isn't. This is simply a budgeting exercise, and it has no effect at all on the actual benefits paid to the families of fallen officers.

The program in question is a Department of Justice's Public Safety Officers' Benefit Program (PSOB), which, among other things, pays a fixed death benefit to the families of slain public safety officers. The current benefit is $315,076 and is adjusted annually for inflation.

So, why the budget decrease? Let's say that you're doing your household budget, and, to get started, you compare last year's budget to what you actually spent. In doing this, you find that you budgeted $2,000 for electricity, but you only spent $1,000. Are you going to still budget $2,000 for electricity this year? Of course not. The goal is to make your budget as realistic as you can. So, you budget using last year's actual spending plus a bit—say, $1,250.

But does this mean that you wouldn't pay the electric company if it turns out that your bills exceed $1,250? Again, of course not. The $1,250 is a budget estimate, not a spending limit.

It's exactly the same with PSOB. Previous budgets allocated far more money for PSOB death benefits than was actually needed. So, the budget amount was sensibly reduced—but the amount is still sufficient to cover all anticipated claims. But even if it turns out not to be sufficient, all claims will still be paid. Remember that the budget is just a budget; it is not a limit on actual spending. PSOB death benefits are mandatory—they must be paid. From a DOJ 2009 budget document:

The funding level requested for FY 2009 is sufficient to cover all anticipated claims in that year for the death benefits program. As this program is counted as a mandatory account, should additional resources be required to fund all claims, the funding level can be adjusted administratively.

So, the fact is that there is no reduction in the benefits that will be paid to the officers' families under this budget. Comparing that simple fact to the headline "Obama to Cut Slain Officers Programs in Half" is enlightening, to say the least.

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Update: FN has updated the headline. Did they fix it? Nooooo. It's even worse:

ACORN is mentioned only in FN's headline; there's not a single syllable about it in the article that the headline links to. I have a theory about how it got into the headline. If you look at the reader comments on the FN site, you'll find a lot of references to the administration's allegedly giving millions (and according to some, billions) to ACORN while slashing payments to the poor families of the dead cops (which, as we have seen, is not the case). My theory? Someone at FN was reading the comments, noticed this, and decided it was a neat way to throw some more raw meat to the pit bulls. But it's just, you know, a theory.

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Update 2 [May 9, 2009]: The International Association of Fire Fighters calls the report "misguided and inaccurate".

The PSOB ... program is an entitlement program, which means that 100 percent of benefits must be paid by law to every family that qualifies. The “cut” that FOX News is reporting is an estimate of what the program will pay out and is based on the predicted number of line-of-duty death claims.

“There has been no cut to the PSOB program,” states IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger. “The families of fire fighters who die in the line of duty will receive the full benefit. Whether there are half as many deaths or three times as many deaths, all claims will be paid.”

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Originally posted in Just Weird Stuff May 8, 2009.