NYT Fearmongers Over Debt as GOP Holds Economy Hostage
The New York Times has been engaged in outright fearmongering over the size of the US federal debt over the past several months.
Ronald Reagan’s Racism Should Come as No Surprise
The historical amnesia that allows people to be surprised that Ronald Reagan was a racist does more than sanitize the image of a historical figure. If you imagine that Donald Trump invented the political technique of appealing to white supremacy, you’re going to have a hard time figuring out an effective way to overcome it.
Appeal to the Working Class? Don’t Bother, Says Krugman
In the wake of a disastrous Election Day, does the Democratic Party need to present economic policies that have more to offer the majority of voters? Don’t bother, argues New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
Paul Ryan, Poverty Fighter?
Let’s say you’re best known for coming up with a federal budget blueprint that slashed tax rates for the wealthy and proposed big cuts to anti-poverty safety net programs, but now you want to be known as a guy who really cares about fighting poverty. Lucky for you, the Washington Post is here to help.
Inform the Public? Not My Job, Says Chuck Todd
It’s sad that NBC‘s White House correspondent thinks his job is merely to convey politicians pronouncements, with no care about whether they are true or false.
CNN’s Recipe for Italy: Austerity—No Matter What
CNN.com had an odd piece of analysis of the Italian election results, arguing that austerity “is necessary by any calculation to actually start moving Italy out of the recession.” That’s not the calculation of Paul Krugman, who for what its worth is a Nobel Prize-winning economist.
David Gregory: Obama Should Trick Republicans by Being More Like Them
When reporters give strategic advice, they tend to reveal what they consider preferable policy goals. A discussion of taxes and spending on Meet the Press revealed a lot about host David Gregory’s worldview.
Fiscal Cliff Not a Cliff? Tell That to USA Today
Some commentators and journalists have pointed out the metaphor for the impending tax increases and spending cuts in 2013–the “fiscal cliff”–is highly misleading, and probably intentionally so. There is no way to reverse course when you fall off a cliff; you are plummeting towards the ground, making a terrible mess upon impact. Thus the brakes […]
Niall Ferguson Can’t Be Factchecked!
Niall Ferguson’s Newsweek cover story “Hit the Road, Barack” has attracted lots of the wrong kind of attention. As Dean Baker put it: It’s hard to believe that progressive bloggers didn’t get together to pay Newsweek to run Niall Ferguson’s piece on Obama. The thing is so shot full of easily identifiable errors no serious […]
What if Paul Ryan Isn’t Really a Wonk? Krugman vs. Campaign Reporters
If you know anything of substance about Paul Ryan, it’s that the Republican vice presidential pick knows his numbers. A Washington Post profile today by Michael Leahy (8/20/12) tells us: He got his start on Capitol Hill as a 19-year-old intern working in the mailroom of Sen. Bob Kasten (R-Wis.). That led in time to […]
Paul Krugman Reads the New York Times
Paul Krugman writes today (New York Times, 7/16/12) on media’s failure to factcheck campaign claims: Perhaps in a better world we could count on the news media to sort through the conflicting claims. In this world, however, most voters get their news from short snippets on TV, which almost never contain substantive policy analysis. The […]
Misinformed on Health Costs by Fox, Rush—and WaPo
Newspaper columnists often seem to get to write what they want. So it’s interesting when two of them are writing about the same thing on the same day—and arriving at the opposite conclusion. In the Washington Post (3/23/12) , conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote this about the Affordable Care Act’s costs, as tallied by the […]
Krugman: Actually, Romney’s Insincerity Is a Bad Thing
There’s this notion in the elite press that Mitt Romney’s flip flops are a good thing–we’ve written about it here and here. In the latter post, I pointed to Nicholas Kristof’s take: I’d much rather have a cynical chameleon than a far-right ideologue who doesn’t require contortions to appeal to Republican primary voters, who says […]
ABC and the ‘Family Budget’ Fallacy
Last year New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (7/8/11) wrote a sharp critique of those who argue that the federal government’s budget should be compared to a family. He called it one of the “right’s favorite economic fallacies,” pointing out: No, the government shouldn’t budget the way families do; on the contrary, trying to balance […]
NYT to Readers: Can You Handle the Truth?
New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane wonders if the readers of the Paper of Record want to know if the politicians the paper covers are telling the truth.
WaPo and Keystone False Balance
Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel has a column in the Washington Post today (1/3/12) outlining the three important election issues to watch–and one of them is about how the press covers the process: Third, the media’s obsession with false equivalence: How the election is covered will almost certainly have a measurable impact on its outcome. […]
Time Paints Paul Ryan as Deficit-Slashing Superhero
The fact that Time magazine named “The Protester” its Person of the Year was maybe a little surprising. Totally unsurprising, though, was the choice of a runners-up: Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, a hero to many in the corporate media for his bold calls to slash government spending on the poor. It’s hard to know where […]
Joe Klein: Newt’s Kids-as-Janitors Plan Too Narrow
We know by now that Newt Gingrich thinks he’s smart. And we know there are plenty of people in the corporate media who believe the same thing. How do they show their love for the brainy Republican presidential candidate? Time‘s Joe Klein shows the way in this week’s issue (12/19/11) of the magazine. He doesn’t […]
Paul Krugman and the Ghost of the Supercommittee
Paul Krugman argues in the New York Times today (11/18/11) that the failure of the Congressional supercommittee might be a good thing, and that public understanding of what’s really happening is hampered by a familiar media problem. He also makes a pretty safe bet about what coverage is going to look like if they fail […]
Bill O’Reilly Polices the 9/11 Boundaries
Fox host Bill O’Reilly knows a thing or two about boundaries. As he told his TV audience Monday night, some “far-left” radicals crossed the line on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a blog post about how some Republican politicians turned the attacks into a “wedge issue,” […]
