Of Logical Fallacies and Lazy Reporting

[Sorry for the long post – important info that Josh is coming to town is below.]

If there is one aspect of newspaper reporting that is almost always wrong, it is linking campaign contributions to legislative actions. And this story on the front page of the Post today does it once again.

Short version of the story: Members of Congress sponsor legislation suspending tariffs on certain imported goods. The beneficiaries of these suspensions are rarely identified, and the suspensions themselves rarely gain public notice.

Here’s the paragraph that riled me:

“Lawmakers usually introduce the provisions at the behest of companies in their districts. Many of those companies and their executives have given federal campaign contributions totaling millions of dollars.”

Well, if this isn’t a case of the logical fallacy “correlation implies causality”, I don’t know what is.

Basically, the reporter is arguing that because the companies and executives have given federal campaign contributions, the lawmakers introduced the tariff suspension bills. Do you think there could be another reason? I do. And it’s right in the same paragraph – “companies in their districts.”

Now I know there are jerkasses who might introduce legislation in return for campaign contributions. But, in my experience, the driver of an action like the one described in the article is almost always helping a constituent(s).

In fact, in each case cited in the article, a lawmaker is acting on behalf of a constituent company (even if it is ultimately owned by a foreign corporation). Show me an example of a lawmaker acting for no other reason than campaign contributions, then including campaign contribution data becomes relevant.

Including the above sentence and further data about campaign contributions in this article is not only a logical fallacy, but it’s lazy reporting that shows a reporter or his editor falling back on their own biases about how and why legislation is introduced and passed. It’s weak and should be called out.

One other thought: the more interesting article would have been about how long these tariffs that are being suspended have been in place and whether the rationale for imposing them in the first place still exists. I remember on the Hill working on an issue related to steel tariffs, some of which had been around since the early 90s. And the rationale for the imposition of some of those tariffs just no longer existed. But the tariffs were still there because tariffs and duties just rarely go away. I can only imagine how long and why some of the tariffs were in place that were cited in the article.

But when you’re busy impugning the motives of big corporations and Members of Congress, that kind of information just gets in the way.