Paul Krugman on the media

[stray cat]

If Bush says that the earth was flat, the headlines on the mainstream media stories is, “The Shape of the Earth: Views Differ." Its always, here's what Bush says, here's what the other side says. It sounds good. He's promising great stuff. You can find it more recently, in unemployment reports. In this case, the last jobs report was really, really crummy. It was crummy enough if you were watching CNBC, which has the 8:30 in the morning when they have the traders in Chicago pit when the number came out, the traders starting chant, Kerry, Kerry, Kerry. But to read all of the newspaper stories the next day, it was well, the Bush people say it's a good number, it's a good report and the other said says it was a bad report and you never would have known the difference.

What do we do? This is really much bigger than Bush. It's a movement that's been building. The one thing that I think you really have to day is that people -- say is that people -- on the left, the position formerly known as the center, people like myself -- people like myself have been asleep for a long, long time. We just didn't -- we didn't take it seriously. We sat through the Clinton scandals and said, probably, you know, funny stuff going on there. Didn't really understand that the extent to which this movement was being built.

The answer, I think, my great hope now is what we need is an enormous unearthing of the scandals that we know have taken place. We need a mega Watergate that rocks them back for enough time so that we can build a counterweight to this thing. Otherwise, this won't be the country we grew up in.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/01/1439231 Paul Krugman

[Shopaholic]

1. But the sad fact is that. . .

the media doesn't know how to uncover "Watergates" anymore. They just repeat the talking points and spin from both parties. They don't dig for facts. They don't report them. And I'm not sure how at this point we can get them to begin doing that. I think that what Krugman is trying to get at here is that if only 1 or 2 brave souls would take the initative and break a huge story the rest of the press might shake off their slumber and remember why they're supposed to be there. But I just think that's it's easier for them to sit on their asses, repeat the talking points and collect their checks, courtesy of the media giants they work for. The odds are stacked against us, my friends.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. I've had the same thought -- media act as if there are two sides...

to every story. There are not two sides to every story. Sometimes news is just plain bad, no matter how the WH spins it. And sometimes things are just plain wrong. The Bush cabal engages every day in acts that are just plain wrong. It's the duty of the press in a democracy to give citizens the truth; bad and wrong should be identified, with the significance of the issues involved made clear.