Lies, Damned Lies, And Elections

Paul Krugman
NYT

As we wait to see whether the GOP nominates the guy who claims that his health plan was nothing like Obamacare, oh no, or the guy who claims that Freddie Mac paid him $1.6 million as a historian, one thing is obvious: this election is going to pose a major challenge to the news media. How will they handle the lies problem?

I’m not optimistic.

Back in 2000, George W. Bush made a discovery of enormous consequence: you could base a whole political campaign on claims that were flatly untrue, like the claim that your big tax cuts for the wealthy went to the middle class, or the claim that diverting Social Security funds into private accounts would strengthen the system’s finances, and reporting would never point this out. That’s when I formulated my doctrine that if Bush said the earth was flat, headlines would read Views Differ on Shape of Planet.

(More here.)