Published on Truthout (http://www.truth-out.org)

NPR Tries to Track Down Those Millionaire Job Creators

Friday 9 December 2011

 

by: Peter Hart, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [3] | Report

Dean Baker (12/9/11 [4]) flagged this NPR Morning Edition report today (12/9/11 [5]), and it's well worth a positivity.

In the debate over the payroll tax cut, Democrats want to pay for extending the tax break with a surtax on the wealthy. Republicans claim--usually without being challenged [6] by reporters--that a surtax on millionaires would be an attack on job-creating small-business owners.

So NPR decided to go to GOP officials and ask to speak with these small-business-owning, millionaire job-creators. Turned out there was trouble finding any:

We wanted to talk to business owners who would be affected. So NPR requested help from numerous Republican congressional offices, including House and Senate leadership. They were unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.

So we went to the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax. Again, three days after putting in a request, none of them was able to find someone for us to talk to.

They did find a few wealthy business owners willing to talk--and they said their personal tax rate wasn't a factor in their hiring decisions.

Imagine if journalists did this kind of thing all the time?

Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/npr-tries-track-down-those-millionaire-job-creators/1323463415

Links:

[3] http://www.fair.org/blog/2011/12/09/npr-tries-to-track-down-those-millionaire-job-creators/
[4] http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/where-are-the-millionaire-job-creators-npr-does-the-big-hunt
[5] http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/12/09/143398685/gop-objects-to-millionaires-surtax-millionaires-we-found-not-so-much
[6] http://www.fair.org/blog/2011/12/07/when-right-wing-tax-spin/

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