Krugman: Media "Blindness" To GOP Fiscal Irresponsibility "Amounts To Journalistic Malpractice"
January 05, 2011 9:42 am ET by Jamison Foser
New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman takes the media to the woodshed:
I see that the Washington Post editorial board is shocked, shocked to discover that the incoming Republicans aren’t serious about deficit reduction. Who could have suspected?
I was going to be snarky all the way here, but actually let’s be serious: the gullibility of much of the media establishment on all this amounts to journalistic malpractice.
Republicans have, after all, been the party of fiscal irresponsibility since 1980; the GW Bush administration confirmed, if anyone was in doubt, that unfunded tax cuts are now in the party’s DNA.
...
Why the blindness? I suspect a lot of it had to do with the desire to seem balanced. Journalists felt that they had to find Republican fiscal heroes, just to show how even-handed and open-minded they were. To say that the whole deficit thing was a political ploy, with no substance behind it, sounded shrill.
The truth often does.
Another problem, of course, is that many reporters simply believe conservatives who claim to care about deficits without assessing whether their policy positions are consistent with those claims. It’s easier and fits into absurd -- and, as Krugman notes, false -- stereotypes.
Krugman makes another point worth highlighting in desperate hope that his fellow journalists start paying attention:
Then along comes a Democratic president who presides over all of two years of deficits in the immediate aftermath of a severe financial crisis – which is a time when you’re actually supposed to run deficits. Republicans begin inveighing against the evils of red ink – and, incredibly, get taken at face value.
No, the war was going to make a profit. It was the Medicare prescription drug coverage that was going to be free.
If our news media is supposed to be the public watchdog we've seen too many of its members dip their heads, roll over on their backs, and turn into submissive followers. They seem to be playing the same role that they did during the build up to the invasion of Iraq and trying to show the same type of false "balance" in their coverage.
We'll get nowhere if they keep playing meek puppies unwilling to stand up against those who are barking the loudest.
IMO, Krugman's op-ed destroys the myth of there being a "liberal media" that rules the American media market, and, as much as I hate to admit it, it also seems to endorse Palin's claim that the MSM really is the "lamestream media."
This defence has been raised for years, and I don't buy it anymore.
GOP policies directly benefit the rich, and the rich only. This inlcudes newspaper publishers who have inherited their media empires.
When was the last time the Washington Post fired a conservative for lying on their pages? George F. Will still works there. Meanwhile, the right-wing hacks and liars likeMichael Gerson, Marc Thiessen, and Jennifer Rubin have been hired. Today, you can find Mitch McConnell lecturing the Democrats about deficit reform on Fred Hiatt's scribble page.
The NYT and the WaPo define the country's alternative to Republican rule ever rightward, and the Sulzberger and Graham family dynasties benefit directly.
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Agreed. If only there were some sort of story to help back us up...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40913123/ns/politics/
ah there it is!
I agree with what Krugman says. When I am working I do try to live within my means, but I do accumulate some debt such as a mortgage. If my job were to go away, then I will accumulate more debt as I do whatever it takes to keep paying my mortage and utilities, even if that means putting it on a credit card. The government is no different other than they have 310 million people to worry about and I only have me, my wife, and my 2 cats.
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Now aides say that the $100 billion figure was hypothetical, and that the objective is to get annual spending for programs other than those for the military, veterans and domestic security back to the levels of 2008, before Democrats approved stimulus spending to end the recession.
Why should it even take the press to tell us?
How f---ing stupid are we as a coutnry?
Four simple facts: Reagan ran record deficits. Bush'41 ran record deficits. Clinton ended up with multiple surpluses. Bush'43 ran record deficits!
How the hell can ANYONE take ANY Republican seriously when it comes to deficit reduction?! My father was barely old enough to vote for the last fisclally responsible Republican! (And back when they still existed, he was still voting Democrat!) They have absolutely no standing when it comes to fiscal responsibility! None! Whatsoever!
Is the press REALLY that good at propagandizing?!
Are we REALLY that god damned GULLIBLE?!
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Unbelieveable
Apparently so. Say it loud enough and often enough and people will believe it.
The failure of the MSM to do its job is what has driven me to turn to foreign newspapers to learn the truth about what goes on in my own country. Al Jazeera, which many conservatives hate, is a much better source for learning the truth about this country than any news outlet in the good old U.S. of A.
Apparently, when the White House and the Congress are both controlled by the Republicans, the blame for anything bad goes to the next Democratic majority or president. Or both.
"Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others,even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story"
A 2003 University of Maryland study concluded that:
ConservatiÂves are more likely to be "followersÂ"
Liberals are more optimisticÂ.
Liberals are more likely to like classical music and jazz. ConservatiÂves, country music.
ConservatiÂve men are more likely than liberal men to prefer entertainmÂent like TV.
Liberal women are more likely than conservatiÂve women to enjoy books.
ConservatiÂves have a greater desire for orderlinesÂs, duty, and rule-folloÂwing.
Liberals are higher on openness, which includes intellectuÂal curiosity, excitementÂ-seeking, novelty, creativity for its own sake, and a craving for stimulatioÂn like travel, color, art, music.
http://wwwÂ.impactlabÂ.com/2007/Â01/09/poliÂtical-persÂonality-trÂaits/
John
Naw, you must be joking, that has to be it.
As for failing to notice what is going on right in front of them vis a vis the irresponsible madness of the economic and fiscal policies and actions of conservatives, the mind boggles. This is not restricted to the U.S. There is a tendency for journalists the world over to assume that people associated with the world of commerce have a monopoly on economic sense and fiscal capability. This is most certainly not so.
Historically the world of commercial finance has lurched from operating competently to "irrational exuberance" to outright criminality and back. There is a world of difference between the profit motive of the capitalist and the socioeconomic wellbeing objective of the economist. The former deals with an individual's benefit whereas the latter deals with a collective good. Latterday conservatives are crap at economics and public finances and have demonstrated it with increasing clarity over the past 400 years.