ANYTHING GOES: Eric Cantor and news orgs and voters oh my!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2014

Part 2—Why is it left to Paul Krugman: For decades, we have lived in a time when pretty much anything goes.

Disinformation is all around us. News orgs agree not to notice.

Last Friday, Paul Krugman discussed this problem in a column for perhaps the ten millionth time. On February 3, in his previous column, The Krugster had done the same thing.

Last Friday’s column had the word “lies” right there in its headline. As he started, Krugman referred to “the latest falsehood in the ever-mendacious campaign against health reform:”
KRUGMAN (2/7/14): Health, Work, Lies

On Wednesday, Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said the obvious: losing your job and choosing to work less aren’t the same thing. If you lose your job, you suffer immense personal and financial hardship. If, on the other hand, you choose to work less and spend more time with your family, “we don’t sympathize. We say congratulations.”

And now you know everything you need to know about the latest falsehood in the ever-mendacious campaign against health reform.
Krugman was discussing a new instant claim—the claim that millions of people are going to lose their jobs because of Obamacare.

This instant claim had instantly been derived from a new CBO report. The claim was bogus—false!—like so many others before it.

For Krugman’s full treatment of this matter, you should read his full column. This is the part where the rubber started hitting the road:
KRUGMAN: It has always been clear that health reform will induce some Americans to work less. Some people will, for example, retire earlier because they no longer need to keep working to keep their health insurance...

The budget office has now increased its estimate of the size of these effects. It believes that health reform will reduce the number of hours worked in the economy by between 1.5 percent and 2 percent, which it unhelpfully noted “represents a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million.”

Why was this unhelpful? Because politicians and, I’m sorry to say, all too many news organizations immediately seized on the 2 million number and utterly misrepresented its meaning. For example, Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, quickly posted this on his Twitter account: “Under Obamacare, millions of hardworking Americans will lose their jobs and those who keep them will see their hours and wages reduced.”

Not a word of this claim was true. The budget office report didn’t say that people will lose their jobs. It declared explicitly that the predicted fall in hours worked will come “almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor” (emphasis added). And as we’ve already seen, Mr. Elmendorf did his best the next day to explain that voluntary reductions in work hours are nothing like involuntary job loss.
According to Krugman, “not a word of [Rep. Eric Cantor’s] claim was true.” And Cantor is a very high-ranking American office holder.

“False claims” of this type are amazingly common in this era, a period in which anything goes. Krugman called the roll of the claims:
KRUGMAN: So was Mr. Cantor being dishonest? Or was he just ignorant of the policy basics and unwilling to actually read the report before trumpeting his misrepresentation of what it said? It doesn’t matte—because even if it was ignorance, it was willful ignorance. Remember, the campaign against health reform has, at every stage, grabbed hold of any and every argument it could find against insuring the uninsured, with truth and logic never entering into the matter.

Think about it. We had the nonexistent death panels. We had false claims that the Affordable Care Act will cause the deficit to balloon. We had supposed horror stories about ordinary Americans facing huge rate increases, stories that collapsed under scrutiny. And now we have a fairly innocuous technical estimate misrepresented as a tale of massive economic damage.
In his previous column, Krugman had described one of those “supposed horror stories about ordinary Americans facing huge rate increases.” That story had “collapsed under scrutiny,” like others before it.

As with Cantor’s bogus claim, so with that bogus story. It too had come from a high-ranking American pol.

We’ll look at that story tomorrow. For today, let’s consider two different aspects of Krugman’s column:

First, we’ll lodge a complaint we’ve lodged before. In the passage we’ve posted above, Krugman attributed the most recent false claim to a high-ranking pol and, he was “sorry to say,” to “all too many news organizations.”

The high-ranking politician got named. The news organizations did not. Which news orgs advanced this latest “false claim?” And shouldn’t Times readers be told?

In fairness, Krugman only gets 800 words. This brings us to our second question:

Why is it always left to Krugman to report and discuss these “false claims?” Cantor is a very major political figure. But so, to a slightly lesser extent, is Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers.

Last month, McMorris Rodgers delivered the official Republican response to the State of the Union address. As she did, she told the latest “horror story about ordinary Americans facing huge rate increases” due to Obamacare.

As Krugman explained on February 3, McMorris Rodgers’ story had “collapsed under scrutiny,” like many other horror stories before it.

Cantor is the House majority leader. McMorris Rodgers was delivering the official GOP response to the State of the Union. If they’re telling stories that collapse under scrutiny; if they’re stating “the latest falsehoods” in an “ever-mendacious campaign;” then why is it left to Krugman to explain these facts, in an opinion column no less?

Tomorrow, we’ll revisit McMorris Rodgers’ story, the one which “collapsed under scrutiny.” We’ll also start exploring a question which occurred to us on the train Friday morning:

Has the New York Times challenged these high-profile false claims in the course of its news reporting?

Those false claims came from very high-ranking officials in very high-profile settings. Has the Times challenged their claims as part of its news reporting?

As we sat on the train reading Krugman’s column, we didn’t know if the paper had done so.

We certainly didn’t assume that the Times had addressed those high-profile misstatements. We’ll guess that you don’t feel real confident either.

That may tell us something right there about an age in which anything goes. Tomorrow, we’ll start to take a look at the record.

Tomorrow: Let’s take a look at the record!

48 comments:

  1. The bullroar is quite widespread these days. It's almost like anything goes!

    The bullroar is quite easy to find. Sometimes, information seems hidden.

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    1. Exactly! Lies wouldn't matter as much if it weren't also difficult to figure out what is true.

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    2. And here we have the rub.

      Is it difficult for "us" to figure out the truth, or is it difficult only for those other less intelligent, less informed masses?

      As far as I can tell, information these days has never been less hidden. It is only the incurious, locked into their notions of what they "know" to be true that seem to have the most difficulty in unlocking and understanding information.



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    3. When you have lots of sources of information, much of it conflicting, it becomes harder to tell what is right. Sometimes less is more.

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    4. I disagree. Democracy is best served by more voices, not fewer; more information, not less.

      It may be hard work to separate wheat from chaff, but that's why God put gray matter between our ears.

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  2. "Has the Times challenged their claims as part of its news reporting?"

    Where is KZ when we don't need him???

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    1. Good to see you giving KZ the attention he doesn't need...again.

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  3. "If they’re telling stories that collapse under scrutiny; if they’re stating “the latest falsehoods” in an “ever-mendacious campaign;” then why is it left to Krugman to explain these facts, in an opinion column no less?"

    Dear Bob! Where do you think the "scrutiny" that collapsed McMorris Rogers fable came from? Just Paul Krugman?

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    1. So, where did it come from? Why not tell us all?

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    2. You want the first?

      http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/jan/30/bette-in-spokane-cited-in-mcmorris-rodgers-speech/


      Or the second:

      http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/jan/31/mcmorris-rodgers-glosses-over-pesky-facts/

      Or is it perhaps, the NY Times coverage of Betty in Spokane you seek? I can't find that they covered the claim by McMorris Rogers to begin with, which may explain why they did not cover its "collapse under scrutiny" until their columnist Krugman did so.

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    3. Thank you. As Somerby points out, we should be naming names and pointing people to the info.

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    4. Yes, Somerby always says we should name names. And he does it, too. Sometimes.

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    5. If you or Somerby needs to be pointed to the info, then you are truly hopeless.

      The Spokesman story spread far and wide in nanoseconds.

      If you can't figure out how to use a search engine, I don't know what to say.

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    6. You know the saying, if you can't say something nice...

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  4. "Has the New York Times challenged these high-profile false claims in the course of its news reporting?"

    Once again, a favorite Bob meme. If the New York Times hasn't done it, nobody has.

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    1. So, who has challenged this? Please post your links.

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    2. It was all over the place a week before Krugman's column:

      http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/31/local-reporting-debunks-obamacare-horror-story-from-republican-sotu-response/

      Mainstream reporters and editors need to be made to pay a career-ending price who swallow right wing talking points before finding out the real truth.

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    3. Yes indeed. A career ending price for swallowing.

      Now urban legend, link us to the one's who did the swallowing, or is that throat swelling exercise also the stuff of your 'nym?

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    4. That would be an exercise in futility until some consensus is reached about what is "mainstream media" these days.

      To Bob, it seems to be MSNBC and the New York Times, on which he spends an inordinate amount of time when he is not writing about some youngish female author.

      To me, I think the entire notion of "mainstream media" has changed dramatically to include all sorts of manner and ways that people can acquire and pass along information these days.

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    5. OMB (Did someone say they missed us?)

      Our fave for collapsing the Republican SOTU response involving Betty:

      http://wonkette.com/540904/cathy-mcmorris-rodgers-is-a-horrible-lying-assclown

      Why can't the New York Times follow the lead of Wonkette? Hell, why can't TDH? Guess they were too busy bashin Obama and his girl Rachel over the wage gap lie to have noticed this one.

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    6. 2:55 was, of course, your cuteness

      KZ

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    7. "A horrible lying assclown"?

      Obviously, that didn't pass Somerby's rigorous Malala test, thus it was to be ignored.

      One must never use such language when describing anyone other than an MSNBC host.

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    8. And yes, Obama's 77 cents was to Bob like ringing a bell to Pavlov's dog.

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    9. If I had a gun I would not shoot the Talib.

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  5. Yeah yeah yeah. More trash talk from our Rethuglican blogger - once again trying to sneak one past us with his seeming support of climate change science and CBO factual analysis. We know your true colors, you fifth columnist, you!

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  6. Krugman is a special voice and I have come to rely on him along with Dean Baker for proper reporting on economics matters.

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  7. By the way, Bob, your post on climate change was truly important since this winter is going to be a problem for climatologists to explain simply and for the media to in turn tell the climate change story with reference to the extremes of this winter simply.

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    1. This is only true if the country consists only of the East coast. We in California are having a major drought unlike any in recorded times. It is again in the 80's today and our rainfall is way below what it should be, the snowpack is nonexistent and freeway signs implore us to conserve water. That doesn't appear on the nightly news because it isn't a single, time-limited event, but it is as real a weather change as the Eastern snowstorms are.

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    2. Meanwhile, here in flyover country, it has been explained to us quite clearly that the frigid winter is the result of the shift in the jet stream caused by the warming Pacific Ocean, and creating "polar vortexes."

      Hence, we have seen warmer temperatures in Nome, Alaska than here on many occasions. And the warmer temps aren't that welcome by Nomers whose homes are built on permafrost.

      But like everything else, people will believe what they want to believe. In fact, a very well educated though conservative and climate change skeptic friend joked last week about shoveling "10 inches of global warming" off his sidewalk.

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    3. Cue DavidinCal with the famous Bob line, "We don't know if the globe is actually warming because all the evidence isn't in yet."

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    4. Globe? Has the flatness option been jounalistically disproven. (And don't give me those silly pieces of photojournalism as evidence.)

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    5. Those silly pieces of photojournalism look pretty flat to me.

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    6. "Look" "Seem" "Appear" Three words which are part of the infinite realm of possibility that when added together imply a "change" of story. Which doesn't mean they aren't lying or telling the truth.

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    7. In the Somerbian Utopia, it does look, seem and appear that no one is ever lying or telling the truth.

      But the difference between a "changed story" and "additional details" does seem to depend on whatever MSNBC host has first said.

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    8. Lie vs truth is so black and white. If you are accusing Somerby of seeing shades of gray, you are probably right. I think he objects when MSNBC hosts present gray areas as if they were black and white. If you find gray areas frustrating, you are probably best off watching MSNBC.

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    9. I do not see Somerby offering too many shades of gray when it comes to his "analysis" of MSNBC in general, and Rachel Maddow in particular.

      In fairness, he has offered some shades of orange.

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    10. His criticisms are generally based on some complexity that Maddow has not acknowledged in her analysis. You are correct that he gives her no benefit of the doubt about whether her efforts are deliberate or mistaken. Given however many millions she earns, she should be capable of better work.

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    11. Yeah. Like Maddow's mind failing to pick up all the subtle possibilities that the superior intellect of Somerby saw that this really, really, really could still be a traffic study. Maybe. It's possible. Coulda been.

      Such shades of gray.

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    12. You assume Maddow does any independent thinking, as opposed to parroting a set of talking points handed to her.

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  8. While it is indeed false to claim that people will be laid off because of this, it is entirely true to say that 2.5 million jobs will be destroyed. Ask yourself why these voluntarily-departed-from positions are not immediately replenished from the pool of the unemployed.

    Krugman (who does not do well in the "lies" department) is thrashing a straw man here - the number of people who claimed that there will be layoffs was small and they quickly stopped saying this. Instead, the vast majority of media and commentators are saying that these jobs will be destroyed. This is entirely accurate, but you won't be hearing it from Krugman.

    For a person who displays flashes of independent thinking, Bob's uncritical devotion to Krugman's output is ... odd.

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    1. Conservative estimates of the number of jobs that will be lost depend on nebulous concepts such as depression of the economy by increased taxes or healthcare expenses. These can always be asserted by those who dislike ACA, but whether they will materialize remains a matter of opinion, not fact. There is no reason why you should expect a liberal blog to share conservative opinions about job losses caused by ACA.

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    2. Why will the jobs be "destroyed" when the positions are "replenished"?

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    3. "Emancipation Proclamation Destroys 3.1 Million Jobs!"

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    4. Were those full time jobs or 3/5 time jobs?

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  9. The media is actually doing the President and his party a favor by focusing on this number instead of the recent waiver decree from the IRS. And Krugman gets to knock the straw man down and act like a liberal hero. It's easier than writing about the ACA waiver issued to medium and large companies.

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    1. And of course you are doing us a favor by not linking us to reportage os said waivers.

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    2. That's the point, genius. Krugman isn't writing about that.

      BTW, I'd like to see a single member of the press corps ask the following question about the permanent ACA waiver for large companies. And that question is this: Why?

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  10. Thanks for the reference, AnonymousFebruary 12, 2014 at 2:48 PM, but you're not reading from my script. As I understand the facts, we know that the world has warmed. We know that there's been little or no warming during the last 16 years or so. We think man's activity has contributed to the warming, to some degree, but that degree isn't known. We think warming is likely to resume, but we don't know whether the rate of warming will be fast enough to be a threat.

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