The Washington Post published an article last month about the growing number of people who are collecting Social Security disability in rural America. The story questioned whether many of these people were disabled or rather just unable to find work so they decided to apply for disability and were usually approved. This is not a story that you would expect to come from The Washington Post. If you remember, it was The Washington Post that produced Woodard and Bernstein who uncovered cover-ups and corruption in the Nixon Administration that let to Nixon leaving the White House. Some people, at least many Republicans, would even claim The Washington Post has left-leaning tendencies, so why would a respected journalistic institution do a hatchet piece on Social Security disability that promotes all the myths Republicans would like people to believe about the program?
That is a question that has to be answered another time because there does not appear to be a good answer. One might say that The Washington Post was just reporting facts about the flawed Social Security disability program, but the newspaper has already admitted to inaccuracies in the story by posting:
Correction: Due to an error in the Post’s data analysis, an earlier version of this story misstated the number of counties with the nation’s highest participation rates in federal disability programs. The correct calculated estimate is 102 counties, not 136. The story, maps and graphics have been revised. For further explanation of the data error, please see the revised methodology box.
Other media outlets have reported on negative reaction coming from disability rights advocates and other entities that claim The Washington Post story was inaccurate. For instance, the article indicated that “as many as one-third of working-age adults” in rural communities collected disability benefits. The Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank calculated that in only one county were as many as one-third of working-age adults collecting disability benefits after examining raw data, which was confirmed by The Huffington Post.
Others have suggested that The Washington Post’s story about the growing numbers of people in rural areas collecting Social Security disability payments is not only misleading, but flat out incorrect. Social Security confirmed to talkpoverty.org, a project of the Center for American Progress, that a lot of the supposed data used by The Washington Post was simply not available for them to come to their reported numbers and data was missing from at least 106 counties.
Unfortunately we are living in an age where there is a lot of inaccurate reporting going on, but you don’t expect it to come from The Washington Post. The reason the inaccuracies are important is the source of the inaccuracies. The authors of the article rightly point out that:
This might seem like a lot of trouble to go through to explain two inaccurate newspaper articles. But the thing is, misleading media reports have consequences—particularly in political climates like the one we’re living in right now. Just this week, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney once again opened the door to cutting Social Security Disability Insurance, despite President Trump’s pledge not to cut Social Security. Misleading media reports based on inaccurate data analysis risk giving Mulvaney and others cover to slash critical programs like SSDI.
Media covering this important program should get their facts straight before going to press.
