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Columbia Journalism Review Calls Out Bloomberg Story on Regulationby Matt FreemanLast week, The Washington Post ran a story about regulation, headlined, "Regulators surge in numbers while overseers shrink." The story came from Bloomberg and was written by reporter Andrew Zajac. The headline captures the thrust of the piece. Zajac writes:
Yesterday, the Columbia Journalism Review dismantled the story's premise in the kind of takedown that ought to prompt the Post not just to run a correction, but to reconsider the way it reviews future Bloomberg stories on the subject before it prints them. The takedown comes from Ryan Chittum, writing for CJR's "The Audit on the Business Press." Its headline also tells the tale: "Inflating the regulatory state: TSA and border security account for almost half of the increase in the regulatory staff since 1980." Chittum writes:
Then he goes on to do what it would appear the Bloomberg and Post editors did not: He actually looked at the data cited in the original story. That revealed:
The data come from a study co-authored by Susan Dudley, Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the latter part of the George W. Bush Administration and now a professor at George Washington University. OIRA is the office that supposedly "oversees" the regulatory agencies. Dudley runs with her numbers in the Bloomberg story, saying that she thinks the comparison between the "growth" of regulators and the static size of the OIRA staff "tell[s] a valid story about the resources devoted to developing and implementing regulations versus the resources devoted to checking or constraining them." Bloomberg doesn't bother to check the numbers or allow for a dissenting view, so it's helpful that CJR took the time to do the math. But, as the inflated numbers concerning post-9/11 TSA and border security hires indicate, Dudley’s “valid" story isn't actually valid upon inspection. There's another fallacy in the article, too, also in the lede. OIRA certainly has a significant role in the regulatory process—not always a constructive one, but a significant one—but "oversee[ing]" the regulatory agencies isn't its job. When it comes to writing regulations to enforce laws, the agencies' obligation is to the statutes themselves, not to a group of White House staffers. It's true that the Administrator of the EPA, for example, serves at the pleasure of the President. But the statutes delegate regulatory authority to the Administrator of the EPA, for example, not to the President, and certainly not to OIRA. That may sound like a distinction without a difference, but it's not. If EPA or some other agency wanted to adopt a regulation over the objections of OIRA, it would be within its statutory authority. The head of the agency might pay with his or her job, but the power to regulate still rests with the agency, not the White House. By contrast, OIRA's authority comes from an Executive Order, not a statute. It lays down timelines for OIRA review of regulations and for the cost-benefit analyses done as part of the agencies' review. But the executive order doesn't—and can't—trump the authority granted to the agencies by statute. So the Bloomberg story is wrong to suggest that OIRA is the agencies' supervisor. It may seem that way, but only because OIRA and the White House get away with it. And, of course, one reason they get away with it is that news services like Bloomberg treat OIRA's penchant for substituting its inexpert judgment on the substance of regulations for the informed judgment of the agencies themselves as if it were a perfectly normal, reasonable, even traditional exercise in governance. Nothing to see here, move along. Since the House GOP began its push two years ago to persuade Americans that the problems with the economy are the product of Obama Administration regulatory overreach, and not the 2008 economic crash that resulted from their own deregulatory policies, we've seen lots of media stories that flow from the premise that the nation is overregulated. The same stories rarely acknowledge the very real benefits of regulations — safer cars, breathable air, potable water, safer workplaces, and so on. (I took a previous Bloomberg story to task on such grounds just a couple months ago, in fact.) It's no surprise to see a Bloomberg story that falls for the GOP line. It's aimed at a business audience, and sees the world through a business lens, sometimes at the expense of other viewpoints, and occasionally at the expense of facts themselves. But the The Washington Post is a different story. Government is its bread and butter, its hometown business. It owes its readers better than a story that blithely distorts facts to suit a partisan talking point, particularly on a topic like regulation that should be right in its wheelhouse.
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