Krugman: A Reckoning for the Media Machine

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/19499/

 

Krugman: A Reckoning for the Media Machine

By Rory O'Connor, MediaChannel.org

 

Posted on August 9, 2004,

http://www.alternet.org/story/19499/

 

NEW YORK – " I try to write only about economics, " says

Paul Krugman with a smile and a shrug. But in the next

breath, Krugman admits that his best-selling book, The

Great Unraveling, " is really about politics and not

economics. "

 

The same may be said of Krugman's scathing Op-Ed

columns in The New York Times, which have undoubtedly

earned him a high place on the White House's media

enemy list.

 

Krugman is an unlikely radical. The Princeton

economist identifies himself as a " moderate liberal, "

and a " free-market Keynesian, " and swears he didn't

plan things this way. " The original idea for my column

came in 1999 from (ex-Times editor) Howell Raines, " he

remembers. " Howell explained it to me like this – 'We

have five guys writing about the Middle East and no

one writing about the economy!' " But Krugman was soon

radicalized by events, and what he calls persistent

and deliberate lies by the Bush Administration.

 

" I had a bad feeling about Bush, from an economic

standpoint, as far back as the 2000 presidential

campaign, " says Paul Krugman, " I just felt – My God,

he's lying through his teeth! "

 

Krugman, who worked as a staffer at the Council of

Economic Advisers during the Reagan administration,

says his government experience taught him that " What

you see in one agency or area can usually be applied

to an entire administration. " In other words, if they

are lying about the budget, they're probably lying

about other things as well – like, say, the presence

of WMD in Iraq, or 'links' between Saddam Hussein and

Al Qaeda.

 

" It came into particular focus right after 9/11, " says

Krugman, " When I began hearing spin and political

explanations of the attacks while the buildings were

still burning. " We now know, of course, that what

Krugman was hearing was the beginning of the buildup

to the Iraq War. " I had no special background in this

stuff, " he says. " But to me, it sounded exactly like

the selling of the tax cuts! I said to myself,

'They're pulling the same stuff again!'

 

" And then along came this political nightmare, " he

says. " And for a while it looked like I was one of the

only people who could say what was really happening. "

 

Krugman admits that the right's vituperative reaction

to what he wrote, and the aggressive and personal

attacks that resulted, " were very scary for a while. "

He feels fortunate that he is not a professional,

career journalist. " I had another job to go back to, "

he says thankfully – which was a good thing, since

" the New York Times was beginning to get nervous! "

 

Krugman's writing – like all noteworthy journalism –

consistently makes publishers nervous. That's what

happened to his book publishers when he handed them

The Great Unraveling, complete with a fiery

introduction he had finished the day after Baghdad

fell to U.S. forces.

 

As he notes in the introduction to the new paperback

edition (which features three new chapters, consisting

of columns he wrote after the war 'ended,') he had

gone " out on a limb " with the book: " I wasn't just

extremely critical of the Bush administration at a

moment of triumph, when TV screens were showing, over

and over again, scenes of the toppling of Saddam's

statue. I went beyond criticism of specific policies

to argue that the Bush administration poses a

challenge to America as we know it. "

 

And like all noteworthy journalism, Krugman's writing

is as much about the media as it is about the events

they cover, uncover, mis-cover and ignore. As he wrote

in The Great Unraveling, " I was also saying that much

of the public and most of the media were missing the

real story of what was happening in America.

 

" When the book first came out, it was pretty crazy, "

says Krugman. " I was saying the same things I had been

saying for several years – but now people began

telling me, 'Thank God someone is finally being

honest!' "

 

Others, of course, were busy denouncing Krugman. But

then those same people were busy calling the BBC the

" Baghdad Broadcasting Company " and terming the New

York Times the " Saddam News Service. " " So far it has

come out all right, " Krugman admits. " But the first

time you get an avalanche of angry mail from people

the National Review has sicced on you, it can be

daunting . . . A lot of journalists get their first

taste of it and simply shear off into self-censorship.

If you say something different, if you see the world

the way I do, you can get marginalized. It's scary,

very frightening . . . but it requires as a matter of

public duty that you put yourself on the firing line.

 

" My situation is different from others, however, and

I'm very lucky for it, " he says. " If The New York

Times had fired me, my income would have gone up and

my life would have gotten easier! "

 

Does Krugman perceive a crisis in American media?

Yes...and no. " My impression is that the pressure has

always been there – so why is the situation so much

worse now? Are the people in power more apt to abuse

their position now? What happened to the days of

Edward R. Murrow? "

 

Krugman believes part of the answer is to be found in

the extreme polarization of our political discourse

" There is no longer any middle to appeal to, no

moderates left to speak to, " he avers. " Instead we get

this false objectivity, a sort of 'On the one hand

this, and on the other hand that' style of reporting.

Or we get extreme partisanship, where the 'facts' are

treated as part of a movement . . . or a large part of

the media is anxious to be perceived as 'objective,'

while at the same time being consistently mau-maued,

and much more by an aggressive right than by the

left. "

 

In any event, Krugman says his bosses at The New York

Times " are pretty happy with me at this point, [small

wonder, in light of their recent 'clarification' of

other Times reportage from that period!] after having

been 'rattled' in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq

War.

 

" Their belief at the time was that the left wasn't a

commercially viable force, and that liberals, for

example, wouldn't buy books! " he says with a

best-seller's smile. That canard put to bed, Krugman

says it's time for a showdown. " Can we break the

machine that is imposing right-wing radicalism on the

United States? " he asks. " The scariest part is that

the media is part of that machine. There will have to

be some kind of reckoning soon, a possible Watergate

moment to come . . . Things aren't all the way

unraveled yet . . . and alternative scenarios still

exist.

 

" We need above all sunlight! We need to see what is

actually going on, " he concludes. " When are people

going to wake up? "

© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights

reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/19499/