Social Security is an issue that, according to six decades of Gallup polls enjoys some 70 percent of the public support. Many opinion makers, politicians and policy gurus, contend that this most basic of retirement programs is in grave danger, and the media has too often reported misleading or flat-out wrong "facts," giving the public only one side of the story.

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Originally published in The Columbia Journalism Review 

Shortly after the 2010 midterm elections, Washington Post budget correspondent Lori Montgomery reported that, while a debate raged around major budgetary changes and the wisdom of cutting Social Security, a "surprisingly broad consensus is forming around the actions required to stabilize borrowing and ease fears of a European-style debt crisis in the United States." A consensus among whom, we asked? Ordinary people who like Social Security the way it is, opinion leaders, or the reporters who record what those opinion leaders say?

Social Security is the one issue on which the electorate is not divided. Gallup polls dating back six decades consistently show some 70 percent of the public strongly supports Social Security. Most Washington opinion makers think otherwise, though. Indeed, listening to the politicians and policy gurus, one would conclude that this most basic of retirement programs for nearly all Americans is in grave danger, and America itself is in grave danger because of it.

For nearly three years CJR has observed that much of the press has reported only one side of this story using "facts" that are misleading or flat-out wrong while ignoring others. Whatever the reason--ideology, poor understanding of how the program works, gullibility, or plain old reportorial laziness--news outlets have given the public a skewed picture of the financial health of this hugely important program, which is the sole source of retirement funds for millions of Americans and will continue to be for decades to come.

To be sure, Social Security is not in perfect financial health. But the fact is, the program can pay full benefits until 2036, and three-quarters of the benefits after that without new revenues. Many experts believe small fixes like lifting the cap on income subject to payroll taxes --$110,100 for 2012--will make Social Security solvent for decades. But that option is not on Washington's table, nor has it been discussed much in the press. Why not? Because it doesn't fit into the doom-and-gloom narrative that has proved politically expedient to tell?

The one-sided reporting on this issue has influenced the way millions of Americans, especially younger ones, now think about Social Security. A twenty-nine-year old web manager for a New York City agency recently told me she was opting out of the program, which the city pension system allows her to do. "I don't think Social Security is a wise investment given the (availability) of a deferred compensation plan," she said. "It's a known fact," the woman explained, "if it stays the way it is right now, it would run out of funds in 2035." How did she know that? She listed the media outlets that helped shape her opinion. The elites were there like The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times, and Bloomberg News, but so were relative newcomers like Investopedia and other media products. The message from the elite media is trickling down.

"The elite press repeatedly quotes the commentary of the devoted opponents of social insurance retirement programs," says Yale professor emeritus Theodore Marmor. "But they appear unaware of how they are supporting a strategic attack on social insurance that has been going on for years."

Montgomery's other writings leave little doubt where WaPo stands on Social Security. At the end of last year, she produced what Campaign Desk called a "lopsided special report that strayed pretty far into opinion territory" and offered a misleading explanation of the program's finances; her piece prompted a letter of rebuttal from the usually low-key National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonpartisan group whose members represent all colors of the political rainbow. In a page one story this February, Montgomery reported that in Obama's budget "there would be only modest trims to federal health-care programs and no changes to Social Security, the biggest drivers of future borrowing, despite last year's raucous political debate over the federal debt." The implied message: the president should have proposed major changes.

The Post's editorial pages have also supported the same narrative. When, last year, the congressional supercommittee was attempting to cut a deal on Social Security, the Post noted that "crunch time" came with "a new round of self-centered, shortsighted intransigence on the part of AARP and its fellow don't touch-my benefits purists." Last week, columnist Robert Samuelson used his WaPo space to say that Social Security has evolved into what is now known "as welfare." He asked a question he and other columnists at elite publications have asked for years: Who among the elderly need benefits? How much? At what age?

Samuelson has made these points before. In 1988, writing for Newsweek, he argued Social Security is a welfare program. In 1996, also in Newsweek, he seemed to challenge Bill Clinton "to alter the debate on "middle class entitlements.'" Earlier this year in the Post, Samuelson asserted "spending on the elderly is slowly and inexorably crowding out the rest of government."

It's a popular message. Broadcast anchors, hosts, and expert guests have also told the public that Social Security is the cause of the federal deficit, and have narrowly framed the possible cures. The ones mentioned most often include reducing cost-of-living increases; means testing the program, which will turn it into a welfare arrangement; and raising the age of eligibility to 69, 70, or higher. What is the public to think when they hear Eliot Spitzer opine, as he did last year on CNN's Parker/Spitzer show, that "we need more senators down there who will say very clearly raise the retirement age, do it gradually." What are they to think when a CBS Evening News segment offers viewers what Campaign Desk called "a breathless recitation of the horrors befalling the system" that used scare words and phrases like "the system is headed for a crisis" and "there's no debating that we're running out of time."

With that kind of news reporting, young people like the New York City worker can be forgiven for misunderstanding the concept of social insurance and believing Social Security is almost dead. Over the decades since the passage of Social Security in 1935, the media have used the term "social insurance" less and less, which of course keeps people in the dark about what it really is. In 1930, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune together published nearly eighty articles with the words "social insurance" in the headline. In 1990, there were at most two--one in the Times and one in the Post. By then the Cato Institute and other conservative think tanks were well on their way to changing the media's narrative and description of Social Security. The program was no long to be described as social insurance, but as an investment that fell short of what people could achieve on their own by saving and managing their payroll tax contributions. It was not a good deal for younger workers.

In 1983, Stuart Butler, now director of the Policy Innovation Center at the Heritage Foundation, crafted a manifesto called "Achieving a "Leninist" Strategy'" outlining how the right could systematically attack the country's most popular social program. The document advised "one element involves what one might crudely call guerrilla warfare against both the current Social Security system and the coalition that supports it." Butler and his coauthor identified key interest groups--the young, the middle-aged, and those nearing or in retirement--to target. The manifesto also described the need for "an education campaign to gain the support of key individuals in the media as well as to win over vital constituencies for political reform," and it called for exploring and formulating into legislative initiatives "methods of neutralizing, buying out, or winning over key segments of the Social Security coalition."

The media haven't reported much about how the nuts and bolts of proposals to fix Social Security would affect ordinary people, but they've done a super job of showing how Social Security's opponents have brought one of the biggest segments around to their way of thinking--Congressional Democrats, including the second ranking member of the Senate, Dick Durbin, who is often the media's go-to guy for the progressive perspective. It's kind of a validation of Cato's manifesto. As Politico reported , though Durbin had long allied himself with Social Security supporters, he said he's been convinced that action is vital. "If we don't do something and do it quickly bad things can happen in a hurry," he said.

"We used to have Democrats speaking out (in support of the program) which we don't have today, " says Eric Kingson, co-director of the advocacy group Social Security Works. It was the Democrats who pushed for the payroll tax holiday--helped along by the media, which have passed along their quotes about assisting working people. Too often the reportage has glossed over the negatives of the tax cut , without noting what would happen if the tax is not restored. Kingson's group and others, including some Republicans, argued that if the payroll tax is not restored and the government must borrow money from the Treasury to pay benefits to current recipients, Social Security will contribute to the deficit, which it doesn't do now. That will produce more reasons to change the program. "Once the dominant view on each side of the aisle was that seniors need Social Security, and it was fair to everyone," said Kingson. "Generations were not in conflict."

This month, Esquire published a lengthy piece titled "The War Against Youth." Part of the headline proclaimed: "The recession didn't gut the prospects of American young people. The Baby Boomers took care of that." The argument that fat-cat elders are shafting young people follows from there. The author, Stephen Marche, writes: "The biggest boondoggle of all is Social Security," and he goes on to explain that the Baby Boomers are to blame.

What readers of Esquire may not know is that, two years ago, the magazine assembled a bipartisan commission , similar to Obama's Simpson-Bowles Commission, that--in three days' time--came up with a plan to balance the federal budget. The Esquire group's recommendation were similar to those made by Simpson-Bowles. At the end of its report, the Esquire panel thanked the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and its president, Maya MacGuineas, "for their invaluable assistance in providing the commission with accurate data and budget options." That committee has received support from Peter G. Peterson, an arch-foe of Social Security who has tried to get the media to see things his way. The media consensus continues to build.

Authors Bio:
Trudy Lieberman, a
journalist for more than 40 years, is a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review where she blogs about health care and retirement
at www.cjr.org. Her blogposts are at http://www.cjr.org/author/trudy-lieberman-1/
She is also a fellow at the Center for Advancing Health where she blogs about
health at http://www.preparedpatientforum.org/.   Her blog posts are at http://blog.preparedpatientforum.org/blog/category/author/trudy-lieberman/   Lieberman has had a long career at Consumer Reports specializing in
insurance, health care and health care financing.   She was also the director of the Center for
Consumer Health Choices at Consumers Union.  
She is a contributor to The Nation,
and has written a column about health and the marketplace for the Los Angeles Times.   Lieberman began her career as a consumer
writer for the Detroit Free Press
where her reporting became a model for consumer writers across the country.

She has won 26 national and
regional reporting awards and other honors, including two National Magazine
Awards, 10 National Press Club Awards, five Society of Professional Journalists
Deadline Club Awards, a John J. McCloy Fellowship to study health care in
Germany, a Joan Shorenstein Fellowship from Harvard University to study media
coverage of medical technology, an honorary doctorate of humane letters from
the University of Nebraska, and two Fulbright Fellowships---a senior scholar
award to study health care in Japan and a senior specialist award to
participate in training conferences in the United Kingdom for European health
journalists.   She is the author of five
books including Slanting the Story the Forces That Shape the News and
the Consumer Reports Guide to Health Services for Seniors, which was
named by Library Journal as one of
the best consumer health books for 2000.

Lieberman is an adjunct associate
professor of public health at City University of New York where she teaches
courses on the media's influence on public health.   She was director of the health and medical
reporting program at the Graduate School of Journalism, City University of New
York, has taught media ethics in the Science, Health and Environmental
Reporting Program at New York University, and has been an adjunct professor of
journalism at Columbia University.   In
2006, she was a Beamer-Schneider SAGES Fellow at Case Western Reserve
University where she taught courses on media ethics and the ethics of health
care delivery.   In 2007, she was
appointed the James H. Ottaway visiting journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz
where she taught a course on the media and the marketplace.   In 2011, Lieberman was named the Soderlund
Visiting Professor in the College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the
University of Nebraska where she taught public affairs reporting.

Lieberman served five years as the
president of the Association of Health Care Journalists, a professional
organization of over 1300 journalists who cover health and medicine, and
continues to serve on the board of directors as immediate past president.   She is currently a national advisory council
member of the California Health Benefits Review Program.   She has served on the board of directors for
the National Committee for Quality Assurance, the Medicare Rights Center, and
Village Care of New York.   Lieberman
appears on many panels and lectures widely on health care in the U.S.   She holds a B.S. with distinction from the
University of Nebraska and earned a certificate in business and economics
journalism from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism where she
was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in 1976-77.

She can be reached at trudy.lieberman@gmail.com
and can be followed on Twitter at trudy_lieberman.