Political Games: Semantics

Here is Dean Baker in a post at his blog at The American Prospect pointing out how the media misleads by playing the game of semantics, i.e. using words in unusual way to leave misleading impressions:

Suppose your boss told you that you were getting a big pay increase. After spending the night celebrating, you find out that the your pay increase was coming in the form of higher health care benefits for people who used to work at your office.

That could happen if your boss was the New York Times. It tells readers today that the United Auto Workers have agreed with Ford to accept a cut in hourly compensation from $60 an hour to $55 an hour, bringing their compensation closer in line with the $49 an hour paid by Toyota and other foreign manufacturers. It is only in the fourth paragraph that the NYT tells readers that this figures includes the cost of health care benefits to retired workers.

It would be helpful if the NYT and other media outlets would revert to normal English usage in discussing the compensation of auto workers. Ford is welcome to keep their books anyway they like, but payments that do not go in any form to current workers, like the cost of retiree health benefits, do not fit the definition of compensation. UAW auto workers are reasonably well-paid, but their compensation package is not as generous as this measure of "compensation" implies.