March 2004 Archive

In any case, the person who I think will be most affected by this new policy is Times columnist David Brooks. It is both with great pleasure and great sour grapes that I point you towards this piece by Sasha Issenberg in Philadelphia magazine. Sour grapes because yours truly has for months been planning exactly such an investigation of the Brooks oeuvre, and in fact had planned to publish it pretty soon. Great pleasure because when another journalist scoops you, you at least want them to do the topic justice, and Issenberg did a helluva job -- he fact-checked many of the Brooksian generalizations that had also caught my eye during the past couple of years and, as a bonus, backed Brooks himself into a hilariously self-serving and unconvincing defense of his bad journalism.

OH SUSANNA: The great Susanna Cornett is 'Bama blogging as promised, and she appears by name in Chris Muir's Day By Day cartoon from yesterday!

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All the President's Spin will provide the definitive non-partisan account of the Bush administration's unrelenting dishonesty about public policy. The book will demonstrate how the White House has broken new ground in using misleading sales tactics to promote its policies and manipulate the media.

Bryan, Ben and Brendan feel compelled to preemptively respond to criticism that the negative focus on the Bush administration will represent a departure from their non-partisan mission:

In short, this is not a partisan book, nor are we changing the nature of our analysis. Our commitment to non-partisanship is steadfast; we will continue to hold Democrats and liberals accountable on the website, in our Philadelphia Inquirer column and elsewhere. But being non-partisan does not require that everything we write be mechanically balanced between criticism of both sides. In the future, we may well write books or articles focusing exclusively on liberals or Democrats, who have become increasingly aggressive in their rhetoric in recent months. But after almost three years of critiquing spin, we believe that Bush's presidency is the most important subject for an in-depth analysis.

Given Spinsanity's outstanding track record of fair and principled criticism of all sides, the book is likely to be a valuable contribution.

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And while their opinions are their own, the columnists are obviously required to be factually accurate. If one of them makes an error, he or she is expected to promptly correct it in the column. After some experimentation at different ways of making corrections, we now encourage a uniform approach, with the correction made at the bottom of the piece.

. . .

None of this is meant to suggest that columnist can pick or choose which errors to correct. They are expected to correct every error. Anyone who refused to fulfill this critical obligation would not be a columnist for The New York Times very long. And none of this is meant to suggest that the editorial page editor can use the policy to duck responsibility for inaccuracies on the page. Whenever an error is brought to the attention of one of the Times editors, it goes to me, and through me to the columnist in question. These are some of the top writers in American journalism. They take their reputation for accuracy very, very seriously.

This represents a significant tightening and clarification of Times policy, and it should result in more responsible behavior by columnists, now that they know that needed corrections will properly be inserted prominently in a future column.

LUSKIN ON KRUGMAN: Donald Luskin has been tenacious in monitoring Paul Krugman's columns. I have added his National Review Online archives to the "Further Reading" list at the end of last week's Krugman series.

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CONCLUSION: Let's agree that Paul Krugman was a non-partisan economist as recently as a few years ago. Granting that, how many hundreds of astonishingly one-sided New York Times columns must he write before even his supporters are forced to confront the notion that he has since become something very different -- "a firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person; especially: one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance"? When measured by the Lying in Ponds approach of evaluating individual references to the two parties, Paul Krugman is far more one-sided than the average pundit, far more one-sided than any other New York Times columnist, and is rivaled only by Ann Coulter and Robert Scheer of the major pundits evaluated here. The crossover column analysis shown earlier suggests that Michael Tomasky's approach of quantifying partisanship by evaluating entire columns would yield a similar result. The conclusion is inescapable: Paul Krugman's columns for the New York Times have been extremely partisan -- it's not a close call.

Paul Krugman has referred to himself as "the lonely voice of truth in an ocean of corruption". Some critics suggest a descent into paranoia. When Lying in Ponds hears from Mr. Krugman's many fans, it's clear that many of them remember his more balanced commentary during the 1990's and, while admiring his skewering of the Bush administration, assume that he has continued to criticize Democrats as well. Thanks to the untiring efforts of archivist Bobby Pelgrift, each one of his 400+ Times columns is preserved online, and that record is perfectly clear. At some point prior to the presidency of George W. Bush, Paul Krugman abandoned substantive criticism of Democrats. As the Bush administration proceeded, Mr. Krugman's non-partisan economics columns disappeared, and he began to ruthlessly simplify every topic according to a formula that even non-economists can understand -- one political party is very good and the other is very, very bad.

FURTHER READING:
Paul Krugman's New York Times page
The new Paul Krugman website
The Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive
Donald Luskin's National Review Online archives
2003 PressThink essay by Jay Rosen
2003 Weekly Standard article by Andrew Ferguson
2003 Washington Post article by Howard Kurtz
Krugman is named 2002 columnist of the year by Editor and Publisher
2002 Washington Monthly article by Nicholas Confessore
2002 Spinsanity article by Bryan Keefer
2001 Salon article by Damien Cave
2001 New York Magazine article by Michael Wolff
Krugman is Awarded John Bates Clark Medal

UPDATE: (29 March) Added Donald Luskin's Krugman Truth Squad archives to the "Further Reading" list.

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BUT WHAT ABOUT SUBSTANCE AND ACCURACY? Paul Krugman is not an ordinary political pundit. He began writing about politics only after building an academic career in economics, winning the "prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, given biannually by the American Economic Association to the economist under 40 who has made the most important contributions to economics". That was in 1992, before he became more widely known through his writing in Slate and elsewhere. The value of having an award-winning economist writing in The New York Times about economic issues with substance and understanding was shown during the California energy crisis, as described by Nicholas Confessore in a 2001 Washington Monthly article:

For Krugman devotees, however, the main appeal is his proclivity for writing things before it is okay to write them. Journalists may love to break news, but they hate to contradict the narratives that crystallize around particular politicians or policies. Late last winter, for instance, the established storyline on California's energy crisis was that Left Coasters had only themselves to blame: the state had passed a flawed deregulation law, which led its utilities to rely on the spot energy market when prices were high. This neutral explanation came from the supposedly competent and disinterested Federal Energy Regulatory Committee, so reporters favored it. And while the press gave plenty of column inches to the Bush administration's preferred spin--that environmentalists had stymied the construction of needed generation capacity--few reporters gave credence to groups like Public Citizen, who blamed the crisis on market manipulation by energy companies, many of them based in Texas and enjoying close ties to the administration. But Krugman, noting that economists had long worried about the vulnerability of California's trading system to price-fixing, argued that market manipulation was the obvious culprit; otherwise, he wrote in March 2001, the power company executives "are either saints or very bad businessmen." Krugman was ignored at the time. Twenty months later--following the collapse of Enron, three federal investigations into the California crisis, and a passel of indictments against energy company officials--Krugman has been proved right.

Over the past two years, the only other Lying in Ponds pundits who have written columns as one-sided as Paul Krugman are Ann Coulter, Robert Scheer and Molly Ivins. But the other three columnists share something which Mr. Krugman does not -- they have built up such a dismal record of "manipulative political rhetoric" and "deception and irrationality" that there is a section devoted to each of them on the invaluable Spinsanity Topics page. Although Spinsanity has occasionally criticized him, Paul Krugman's writing has never descended to the absurd levels of "emotional, subrational jargon" of Ann Coulter or the "lies, spin, and jargon" practiced by Robert Scheer.

That relatively favorable assessment of Paul Krugman is certainly not shared by Donald Luskin and the so-called Krugman Truth Squad:

How does Paul Krugman do it? I have to admit he has a beguiling rhetorical style and he writes with supreme self-confidence. But more important is his limitless willingness to prevaricate, exaggerate, character assassinate, use innuendo, and scare-monger -- whatever it takes to make his case.

Mr. Luskin and his colleagues ruthlessly dissect almost every column, subjecting Mr. Krugman to what must be an unprecedented level of scrutiny. Although Lying in Ponds believes that Mr. Luskin sometimes goes too far, it strongly supports his campaign for a better columnist correction policy at the Times, a cause creatively pursued by Robert Cox at The National Debate, and perhaps also supported by David Corn in The Nation.

All columnists make errors, and most exaggerate and make bad predictions from time to time. Brad DeLong writes that Paul Krugman is "usually right (80% of the time?); he's sometimes wrong." Nicholas Confessore discusses a couple of "major errors", but concludes that "his record is nearly perfect" on "the topics he writes about most often and most angrily". Howard Kurtz and The Economist also note some missteps. Some of Mr. Krugman's predictions have been very questionable: (1) in 2002 he predicted "that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society"; (2) in 2002 he predicted that a "drag on the economy" would result from a tax form gotcha: "Finally, there's line 47. You haven't heard about that, but you will"; (3) in 2002 he predicted that Trent Lott would continue as Senate Majority Leader after a "slap on the wrist" over his remarks on Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign. A common thread runs through these errors and poor predictions -- hostility toward Republicans.

Does Paul Krugman err more often than other columnists? Well, opinions vary. The Lying in Ponds view is that Mr. Krugman's gifts as an economics writer are squandered when he spends his column-space on Trent Lott and French elections. It may be theoretically possible to be both highly partisan and scrupulously factual, but in political as in all wars, truth must be the first casualty.

Tomorrow: Part 5: Conclusion

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WHAT'S WRONG WITH CRITICIZING REPUBLICANS? A couple of years ago, Paul Krugman responded to the charge of partisanship by saying that it would be irresponsible or even unethical for him to criticize Democrats in the context of Bush administration policies: "Does the ideal of 'nonpartisanship' mean that I should have mixed my critiques of Bush policies with praise, or with attacks on the hapless, ineffectual Democrats, just for the sake of perceived balance?" Here at Lying in Ponds, Mr. Krugman is not faulted for serious and substantive criticism of Republicans, but for his consistent failure to apply the same (any?) standards of judgment to Democrats. Why is it not possible to write and chew gum at the same time, to believe that the Bush administration has been dishonest and incompetent, yet offer principled criticism of one's own party in cases where it is clearly deserved? Not once, in 400 columns? Other liberal columnists such as Frank Rich, Mary McGrory, Michael Kinsley and even Robert Scheer and Molly Ivins have managed to do so. Mr. Krugman has not, because he has systematically minimized or avoided commentary on any news uncomfortable to Democrats -- the Marc Rich pardon, Robert Torricelli, Al Sharpton, Gray Davis, etc.

In the same 2002 statement on his website, Paul Krugman described himself as "writing an economics column". Yet the Lying in Ponds analysis of his columns from 2000-2003 clearly shows that his non-partisan columns on economics, very frequent in 2000, have almost completely vanished, replaced by partisan screeds on a wide range of subjects. Now even columns on completely non-economic topics such as elections in France are routinely used to bash Republicans. The Economist has noticed the same thing:

For while he has had some journalistic coups during his time as a columnist -- most notably in recognising, long before most other commentators, that market manipulation played a role in the California energy crisis -- perhaps the most striking thing about his writing these days is not its economic rigour but its political partisanship.

Paul Krugman has many thoughtful defenders, who often point out that he frequently criticized Democrats such as Robert Reich during the Clinton administration. While Lying in Ponds has not attempted to analyze Mr. Krugman's pre-New York Times writings, it is clear that he was far more willing to criticize Democrats back then. Given that, it would be natural to theorize that Mr. Krugman is a critic of whichever party is in power, that his beef is with the Bush administration rather than Republicans in general. When Howard Kurtz asked why Mr. Krugman had failed to criticize Democrats, he responded: "It hardly seems worth it . . They don't have a whole lot of power." A problem with that theory is that it's easy to show that Mr. Krugman's gentle treatment of Democrats began at least as early as 2000, when he wrote 99 columns containing a grand total of only three (3) individual negative references to the sitting Democratic president. Further, Mr. Krugman's partisanship score would be high even if every reference to the Bush administration, even if every single Republican reference of any kind is ignored, due purely to his favorable treatment of his own party.

Tomorrow: Part 4: But What About Substance and Accuracy?

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HOW COMMON ARE CROSSOVER COLUMNS? At the bottom of today's post is a table which lists the Lying in Ponds pundits with the fewest crossover columns in 2003. Clearly, crossover columns are relatively commonplace. Even pundits who are frequently criticized as partisans write some -- George Will and Maureen Dowd had ten each. Cal Thomas wrote a column entitled "The embarrassing GOP". Even columnists who have been fixtures in the Lying in Ponds Top Ten over the last two years such as Michael Kinsley and the late Robert Bartley had two each. Anyone can do it.

Only four columnists failed to cross over a single time last year: Ann Coulter, Molly Ivins, Paul Krugman and Robert Scheer. Let's look at the records of each of the four. I have evaluated two years of Ann Coulter columns so far. She did have two crossover columns in 2002, but they were both directed at Norman Mineta in his role as the Bush Administration Transportation Secretary. Of course Mr. Mineta is actually a Democrat, so those columns qualify as crossovers only on a technicality. Ms. Coulter has been even more one-sided in her commentary than Mr. Krugman over the past two years and her "irrational rhetoric and pervasive factual errors and deceptions" and desire for the death of her political opponents puts her in a league entirely of her own.

I have only one year of data on Molly Ivins and Robert Scheer. Both were very consistently partisan last year, although Mr. Scheer came close to crossing over with a column criticizing California Attorney General Bill Lockyer. It's not very difficult to find evidence that Mr. Scheer can criticize his own party if you browse back through his archives for a couple of years. He defended Arnold Schwarzenegger against Gray Davis and criticized Gary Condit in 2001, and in 2000 wrote a column entitled "Al Gore, gutless wonder". Similarly, clicking back through Molly Ivin's archives yields at least one column where she praises Republicans and criticizes Democrats over the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill.

That brings us back to Paul Krugman, who has placed 400 columns on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times going back to the beginning of 2000, yet has never written a substantive column criticizing Gray Davis, Gary Condit, Al Gore or any other Democrat. Lying in Ponds has the statistics for his columns in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004, and the entire set of columns are available online at The Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive. Of course Mr. Krugman has occasionally criticized Democrats in his columns, but it's usually done tactically in the context of much sharper criticism of Republicans. An example of an almost-crossover was a September 2000 column with the promising title "Gore's Tax Problems". The column does contain substantive criticism of the Gore-Lieberman economic plan, but in the end, Mr. Krugman judged the plan as "merely uninspiring" when compared to George W. Bush's "grossly irresponsible" tax plan. Relative to the rest of Mr. Krugman's NYT canon, that column qualifies as harsh treatment of Democrats. The point is not whether his views on that subject were valid, but rather that Mr. Krugman has simply been utterly unwilling to offer undiluted criticism of any Democrat, on any subject, for a span of 400 columns.

Tomorrow: Part 3: What's Wrong with Criticizing Republicans?

Fewest 2003 Crossover Columns

Ann Coulter	0
Molly Ivins	0
Paul Krugman	0
Robert Scheer	0
Walter Williams	1
Robert Bartley	2
Mona Charen	2
Daniel Henninger	2
Michael Kinsley	2
Thomas Sowell	2
Charles Krauthammer	3
Brendan Miniter	3
William Raspberry	3
Linda Chavez	4
David Brooks	5
E.J. Dionne	5
Jeff Jacoby	6
William Safire	6
Cal Thomas	6
Robert Samuelson	7
Maureen Dowd	10
George Will	10
Thomas Oliphant	14
Clarence Page	16
Richard Cohen	19
David Broder	36

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KRUGMAN 400: Paul Krugman reached a milestone a couple of weeks ago -- he's now written over 400 columns for The New York Times, yet not a single one of them has been a "crossover column", consisting primarily of substantive praise of Republicans or criticism of Democrats. The award-winning economist and leading columnist has never written an entire column praising the Republican Party or any individual Republicans on any issue. He's never written an entire column criticizing the Democratic Party or any individual Democrats on any issue. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that a liberal columnist such as Mr. Krugman would be stingy with praise for Republicans, but even the most strident ideologues will tend to criticize members of their own party for failing to live up the party's principles, or for being too willing to compromise with the other side. Yet Paul Krugman has managed to write two columns per week for the last four years (including the final year of the Clinton administration) without finding a single occasion to substantively take issue with the Democratic Party. How is that possible?

An important part of the answer is that Mr. Krugman has chosen to systematically avoid issues or persons in the news which reflect negatively on his own party. Mr. Krugman has never mentioned in one of his columns the universally-condemned 2001 pardon of Marc Rich by President Clinton. Despite living in New Jersey, he has never mentioned former Senator Robert Torricelli, who withdrew late in his 2002 reelection campaign because of a fundraising scandal. He has never mentioned former Democratic kingmaker and still-active presidential candidate Al Sharpton. He has criticized controversial Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe on only one occasion in four years.

Here at Lying in Ponds, a crossover column is defined as one which leans the opposite way of a pundit's usual party orientation. As an attempt to exclude non-substantive efforts (accidental or offhand references), a crossover column is arbitrarily required to contain at least five non-neutral party references. So if a pundit writes a column with three negative but only two positive references to their own party, that would count as a crossover column -- certainly an extremely lenient standard. Is Mr. Krugman's lack of crossover columns unusual? How often do other columnists cross party lines by writing an entire column contrary to their normal orientation? Might there be an explanation for 400 one-sided columns other than the obvious one -- partisanship?

Tomorrow: Part 2: How Common are Crossover Columns?

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CONDOLENCES: Our deepest condolences go to fellow North Carolina blogger Scott Elliott of Election Projecton, whose parents were murdered in Iraq earlier this week.

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The editors who decided to handle the clarification this way may not know the term, but this was a classic example of the rowback. The one definition I could find for this ancient technique, from journalism educator Melvin Mencher, describes a rowback as "a story that attempts to correct a previous story without indicating that the prior story had been in error or without taking responsibility for the error." A less charitable definition might read, "a way that a newspaper can cover its butt without admitting it was ever exposed."

You are demanding partisanship. Isn't the idea to avoid it? I cannot speak for Krugman because I don't read him often. Krauthammer, however, I do. He spoke about the issue, which is the point. Not what Bush thinks (does Bush think?). Not what Kerry thinks (does he know what he thinks?).

Come on now. The issues are the issue, not the people in charge at the moment or the people trying to get there. You're adding fuel to the partisanship fires.

Whether or not you agree with the reader's take on Mr. Krauthammer's column, I think the reader is misunderstanding the Lying in Ponds view of partisanship. When Charles Krauthammer criticizes Democrats or Republicans about any particular issue, that's not partisanship. Partisanship is when a pundit demonstrates over dozens or hundreds of columns over months or years on a range of issues that they will almost exclusively criticize the other party. A truly partisan columnist -- Mr. Krauthammer has been ranked as moderately but not extremely partisan over the past two years -- seems to write only three types of columns: (1) one which bashes the other party, (2) one which praises their own party; and (3) one which creatively manages to avoid or minimize criticism on an issue of disagreement with their own party.

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Chapter 2 emphasized that nonpartisan coverage in nineteenth-century newspapers emerged as a commercial product. By assembling a larger audience a newspaper could charge advertisers higher rates and take advantage of economies of scale in paper production. Though objectivity now forms part of the creed of modern journalism, perceptions of media bias still persist. Often complaints about media bias are expressed in terms of conspiracy, corporate control, or class conflict. The evidence presented here on audience interests and the targeting of demographic groups provide another explanation, that perceptions of media bias arise in part from the economics of news markets. When asked to place themselves on a scale of liberalism and conservatism, individuals age 18-34 are more likely to say they are very liberal than those age 50+. Women in each age category on average are more liberal than men. Females 18-34 report the most liberal mean ideology rating for the six adult demographic groups examined. This implies that if news outlets try to attract younger, female, or especially young female readers/viewers, they may end up covering issues or adopting perspectives that are attractive to liberals.

See also Andrew Cline's excellent discussion of media bias; note that "commercial bias" is the first on his list of "structural biases of journalism".

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There is another problem with Robertson's theology. Cliff Bjork of the tiny "Searching Together" ministry (www.searchingtogether.org) in Minnesota wrote to me after reading Robertson's remarks. Bjork says Robertson's comments "betray the false premise that God cannot accomplish His will for a nation unless the people elect men (or women) of high 'moral' convictions to positions of authority - especially, of course, when it comes to the U.S. presidency and congressional leadership. I guess the rise to power of men like Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Manasseh, Jeroboam, Herod, Nero, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Amin, Ceausescu, (Clinton?), not to mention (Pontius) Pilate, Herod, et al. must have represented a failure on the part of the citizens of their respective nations and a setback for God's purposes."

Huh? Did Cal Thomas insert Bill Clinton's name on a list which included Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin, and even Pontius Pilate (and Herod twice), or is the Clinton reference part of the quote from Cliff Bjork? This reminds me of when Al Gore ranked George W. Bush as worse than Hitler and Pol Pot, but that was a Saturday Night Live sketch; whoever included Bill Clinton on that list was presumably being serious.

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COLUMNIST CORRECTIONS, ABSOLUTELY: Robert Cox at The National Debate comes up with a very, very mischievous way to tweak The New York Times for their continued lack of columnist corrections (link via Instapundit).

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In 1994 the Clinton administration finally presented Congress with the health care reform plan it had tried to concoct in secret. The plan was based on the general idea of managed care, but for a variety of reasons, including the ill will generated by the closed nature of the process (and the insufferable arrogance of some key administration aides), it was disavowed by most of the managed-care theorists -- including Enthoven himself. Congress rejected the plan, and this ignominious failure set the stage for a Democratic rout in the 1994 elections.

We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding. The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in 1994 to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state, and federal levels. The APPC accepts NO funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. It is funded primarily by an endowment from the Annenberg Foundation.

I like the Daniel Patrick Moynihan quote on their main page: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."

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RASPBERRY ON REPARATIONS: William Raspberry's column this morning discusses the issue of reparations for slavery, but he gives it a different twist by considering a far more recent incident, one for which many of the direct victims are still alive:

And then there is Prince Edward County, Va., where what we used to call the "white power structure" shut down the public schools rather than integrate them in accordance with the 1954 school desegregation decision. The schools remained closed from 1959 until 1964, during which time there was no tax-paid education for black children. (White youngsters were sent to a newly established "private" academy.)