Exploring News and Opinion with “Guest” op-ed Authors

February 27, 2014

When The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Phil Gramm and Mike Solon (for subscribers) pushing “pro-growth tax reform” and criticizing “regulatory burden” and “antibusiness bias, the paper failed to disclose that the authors are partners of an anti-regulation lobbying firm, and that Solon is frequent business lobbyist. (Article Full Text)

Gramm and Solon’s op-ed complains that Democrats won’t lower tax rates and have a “misplaced perception of the importance of the inequality debate.” They add: “A pro-growth tax reform will not undo this administration’s doubling of the federal debt held by the public, its tax increases, increased regulatory burden or antibusiness bias. But it would be a major movement in the right direction.”

Gramm is a former Republican Senator, and Solon worked as his staffer for over a decade. Together they now run a D.C. lobbying firm. The Gramm Partners website states that they work “on the issues that matter most to financial companies” and have “a track record of delivering major accomplishments — and stopping bad deals in their tracks.” Gramm and Solon also run an economic and public policy research firm, US Policy Metrics, “serving asset managers, hedge funds and the investor community.” In addition, Solon has lobbied for a variety of clients including the “lobby giant” Akin Gump, Fidelity, American Express, Mortgage Insurance Companies of America, Exxon Mobil, and US Chamber of Commerce, and Gramm was a “lobbyist for a Swiss bank at the center of the housing credit crisis.”

Yet the Journal’s author identification of Gramm and Solon simply states: “Mr. Gramm, a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is senior partner of US Policy Metrics and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Solon was a policy adviser to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and is a partner at US Policy Metrics.”

This post from Media Matters for America documents how the Journal did not disclose the relevant business ties of both Gramm and Solon –something the media watchdog says the newspaper repeatedly fails to do for writers on its editorial page.

Lesson Guiding Questions

• How important is it for the news consumer to focus on information about the authors of an opinion article? Is it more or less important than the information in the article itself?
• Do you see any problem with the practice of a “Guest” submitting a piece to a well-known and well-read publication like the Wall Street Journal if the guest writers and editors seem to have an intimate connection with the subject? Why or why not?
• Identify the interests that other “guest” op-ed authors might have to the subjects that they are writing about. While this may make them experts in the field, what consequences could come from their words being published in a well-established publication?
• Can you recall other examples of self-interested guest op-ed authors that you have read before?

Additional Resources:

• Here is a video with New York Times OpEd chief Andrew Rosenthal on the art of writing editorials: http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/student-contest-write-an-editorial-on-an-issue-that-matters-to-you/
• This supplemental lesson plan :“For the Sake of Argument: Writing Persuasively to Craft Short, Evidence-Based Editorials,” offers additional ideas for teaching the steps in the process.
• Prompts to help jump-start your brainstorming for ideas that might lead to argumentative writing: http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/200-prompts-for-argumentative-writing/
• A link to an ongoing editorial writing contest for 13-19 year old students, co-sponsored by the Center for News Literacy and the New York Times:
  http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/student-contest-write-an-editorial-on-an-issue-that-matters-to-you/