Legislator Lies; Las Vegas Sun Complicit?
People have been moving away from Nevada because it no longer is an easy place to get a job.
As Nevada’s politicians gear up for a special session to reduce its plans for government spending down to the level of its tax revenue, the Las Vegas Sun this morning profiled politicians who want to raise taxes. Assemblywoman Peggy Pierce told the reporter:
We have the smallest government in the country and it’s not even close.
This is a whopper of a lie. Nevada has an average sized state-and-local government, although because it shifts a large portion of its government funding onto visitors, Nevada residents pay less than other states’ residents. But Nevada’s government spending, in study after study, is average.
Assemblywoman Pierce has been lying about stingy government in Nevada since she was elected. That’s not news. The more striking aspect of this story is the question it poses about the media’s responsibility to give Assemblywoman Pierce a platform to lie without any fact-checking.
Should the Las Vegas Sun’s reporter David McGrath Schwartz have corrected Pierce’s prevarication?
