The news media is the issue
Yeah, I know it’s Paul Krugman — the Shrill One himself. Still, I can’t help but take some small encouragement from the fact that a New York Times columnist recognizes that one of the biggest factors in the outcome of the 2008 election is likely to be the media. Back in 2000, by making their own pissiness toward Al Gore a bigger focus in their election coverage than George W. Bush’s dishonesty and lack of qualification for the presidency, the “elite” media effectively gave us the Bush presidency.
Think what that means: this small collection of media prima donnas played a huge part in giving us Iraq, environmental neglect, corruption, assaults on civil liberties and the politics of fear.
So, could it happen again? Krugman thinks so.
(NY Times) Lies, Sighs and Politics Click here if you have Times Select. Click here if you’re one of the huddled masses yearning to read free.
In Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney completely misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq. Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan’s birthday.
Guess which remark The Washington Post identified as the “gaffe of the night”?
Folks, this is serious. If early campaign reporting is any guide, the bad media habits that helped install the worst president ever in the White House haven’t changed a bit.
June 8th, 2007 at 10:54 am
I would not be so harsh on Krugman. When it comes to Economists who do not have a Gang Of Pirates approach the list is a mighty slim one. If one seems shrill for pointing out raging Psychopantasmic idiocy in a wold of GOP bobble heads, well here is my vote for shrill.
If I have a bone to pick with Krugman at all, it is that he always seems late to the party, arriving months or years after something has been a raging issue on the ‘Net. Taken from his world however, it is early as he is part of the dead tree media, and reality always sinks in there several years late, if it sinks in at all.
If folks who only get their information from dead trees and Sly Foxes happen to learn that the Sly Foxes are lying, then they are welcome to have woken up to the nightmare, however late that wake up is. Those who only get their information from the Sly Foxes are lost and we need every mind we can get from the rest.
June 11th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Sorry I’m so late with this post, just drinking beer & contemplating my navel. But I want to 2d FreeDem’s opinion. Remember, Krugman considers himself a conservative. Would that all conservatives thought so freely. I would consider him an economic heterodox, a social middle of the roader & definitely anti-Bush.
June 15th, 2007 at 1:30 am
The corporate-owned Media is going to aid and abet any efforts to tarnish a Democratic candidate, no matter who it is. The Republican Party feeds the fat-cat corporations. They never get enough. They are not going to bite the hand that feeds them. However, the Internet frightens them. Hence, their attempts to control it. Anyone who really wants to read the news, turns to Internet alternative news sources like Truthout, Common Dreams, Information Clearing House, Buzzflash, Alternet, Huffington Post. My son doesnt subscribe to a newspaper or watch network news. He gets all of his news off the Internet. He is 36. My youngest daughter, 27, does the same. The Media, as we now know it, will be quaint someday. Their greed and bias will be their undoing.