BloggerCon: Paul Krugman and Lies

BloggerCon II Weblog - Celebrating the art and science of weblogs, April 17 at Harvard Law School.

Paul Krugman and Lies

Posted by Dave Winer, 9/22/03 at 7:13:23 AM.

One of a series of agenda-setting essays in anticipation of BloggerCon 2003.

Yesterday I listened to Chris Lydon's interview with NY Times columnist Paul Krugman at the Harvard Bookstore on Friday. What a show. Both Chris and Krugman had the audience on the edges of their chairs, hanging on every word. Except for a brief moment the show stayed in Krugman's world, at the top of his pyramid, where he resides, where he is righteously critical of the US government and speaks to the fears and concerns of the people who attended.

Chris led Krugman all around the issue of lies, government and the Big Press, the subject he's been covering so well in his series of interviews with bloggers and Big Press people. Krugman gets it, but hasn't yet put it together. He tells a story. If the Republicans said the earth is flat, Fox News would report (he says) The Earth is Flat, and people who say it isn't are unpatriotic. Then he says the other press would report Shape of the Planet: Two Sides to the Debate, and would quote Republicans saying it's flat, and Democrats saying it's round. The Harvard audience laughs.

Now I'm not going to say if I agree or disagree with Krugman about the Republcans or Democrats, but I do agree with him about the press. And the story they would report is wrong, it's a lie every bit as big as the ones he claims the Republicans are telling, in fact it's bigger because it's trying to appear balanced. Breaking news: The earth, in fact, is round. To report it as a dispute, while technically accurate, is still a lie. It's not in dispute. The real story is that one half of the political system is lying. That's a much bigger story than the fake story they report. And they do it all the time. Including the venerable paper Krugman works for.

An example, a story on file sharing last week. The reporter shows us one extreme, and then another. But the second isn't very extreme. And then the obvious thing that all copy editors seem to love. "The truth lies somewhere in between." The conclusion, that anyone who listened to music on a computer is a pirate, is not true. It's a lie. And because it's so well hidden, and sounds so reasonable, it's a worse lie. Better to come out with it. According to the NY Times everyone who listens to music on a computer is a criminal. Have the guts to call a spade a spade, if you really mean it, don't hide it in a mist of fake reasonableness.

In my interview with Lydon, the first one he did in the series, I said it must be hard, having risen to the top of the pyramid, to even contemplate the possibility that it had failed. To Krugman, it's wonderful that you make it into print without interference, but we don't. When we're quoted in your paper our words are twisted and turned around until we're telling your reporters's lies. The weblog world is our answer, our incentive to your paper to get its act together now, reform itself, get focused, to use an over-used phrase, to be part of the solution, not part of a festering problem.