Uncategorized
-
Brad DeLong smears Jim Rutenberg
Brad DeLong has written a nasty post attacking Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times as having “neither memory nor morals” and suggesting he be used as “a cosmetics testing subject”: Why oh why can’t we have a better press corps? Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times demonstrates once again that he would be
-
The insanity of employer-based health care
Today’s New York Times featured a chilling anecdote about the consequences of linking health insurance to employment: ASHLAND, Ohio — As jobless numbers reach levels not seen in 25 years, another crisis is unfolding for millions of people who lost their health insurance along with their jobs, joining the ranks of the uninsured. The crisis
-
Journalists who put their lives on the line
I was honored to be interviewed yesterday by a journalist in Iraq who was writing a story about provincial elections in Iraq and the role of the media in political campaigns. He called me because of my work as a press critic, but it’s hard to be critical of the media when you’re talking to
-
Michael Lewis on the financial crisis
If you haven’t read it yet, this Michael Lewis piece on the financial meltdown is a storytelling classic matched only by the This American Life episode on the crisis.
-
Brookings panel on 2008 election
If you want to understand what happened in the election, the best single place to start may be this transcript (PDF) of an all-star Brookings Institution panel featuring the eminent political scientists Larry Bartels, Gary Jacobson, and Jim Stimson along with Thomas Mann of Brookings and John Harwood of CNBC/New York Times — make sure
-
Obama vs. pants
Charles Homans of the Washington Monthly has my favorite Obama celebration anecdote so far (article not online): We walked to the White House. It wasn’t far away, and it seemed like the thing to do. The crowd we met on 17th Street looked like they were in a nocturnal Fourth of July parade, but with
-
Kathleen Parker: Correlation=causation
A conservative organization called the Intercollegiate Studies Institute has released a new report which shows (yet again) that most Americans don’t have extensive factual knowledge of politics. (Whether this matters very much is a question that has been widely debated among political scientists.) Based on this finding, the Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker embarassed herself and
-
Misreporting the cost of the bailout(s)
Memo to journalists — as Kevin Drum points out, the cost of the various financial bailouts, loan guarantees, etc. are being wildly inflated in press reports: This stuff has gotten completely out of hand, with “estimates” of the bailout these days ranging from $3 trillion to $7 trillion even though the vast bulk of this
-
More White House website scrubbing
The White House has been caught making undisclosed changes to its website again (see the full report): [H]istorians researching those early alliance-building efforts say they are troubled by what seem to be deletions of and alterations to the early official lists of nations that supported the war effort. The lists were posted on the White
-
TNR debunks the Fairness Doctrine myth
TNR’s Marin Cogan has definitively debunked the conservative fear-mongering about Democrats reinstating the Fairness Doctrine that I questioned last week: Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and other friends have spent the past year screaming about the horrors of Barack Obama. And, while it’s true that they talked ad nauseam about socialism and the Weathermen and Jeremiah