TW: I liked Avent at the Economist and I still like now that he has moved the Portfolio. Here he addresses a classic journalism bugaboo- the mindless pursuit of balance. Amity Schlaes' work has been panned by a strong majority of actual economists. Yet the MSM continues to want to reference her work on the Great Depression of the 30's as legitimate economic theory. Head in the sand Hooverite Republicans refer to her work ad nauseum for the simple reasons they have little else to which to refer when they propose cutting spending into the teeth of a massive worldwide demand contraction.
Her credentials and the substance of her book are highly dubious but when MSM with cooperation from a political faction get behind someone or something it just takes on a life of its own. Frequently in MSM you now end up with vanilla "he said, she said" which equates the "expert" opinion of two guests or views with no effort at weighting the one who may be backed up by actual academics versus the quack or Fox/MSNBC overtly biased coverage.
Into the void or land of mindless vanilla comes interest groups with savvy PR organizations who can then shape the debate through obfuscation. Tobacco and anti-climate change groups being prominent players in this field. As I have said before the web is the best means by which to obtain competing views, it is not as easy as absorbing 30 second sound bites but it is far more useful.
From Ryan Avent at Portfolio:
"...her revisionist views on the impact of the New Deal on the economy of the Depression have made her the darling of conservatives seeking to stand in the way of expansionary economic policies. The symbiotic relationship between Shlaes and Republicans has set up an interesting dynamic. She has a book called The Forgotten Man which calls into question the value of expansionary policy in the 1930s. Republicans really need some research to that effect, so they all start carrying around her book. Well, this is news, and so the press writes up the story of the academic behind the GOP's economic ideas. Of course, they need to present the other side, so they find an economist or two (usually) to say that Shlaes ideas are utter dreck. But it doesn't matter to readers; academics disagree about things all the time.
So you have the papers paying attention to Shlaes, which suggests she's worth paying attention to, and noting that academics disagree with her, suggesting that this is an area of academic debate. Suddenly she seems very authoritative! Which is good for Republicans and for Shlaes and for the papers, which get eyeballs from writing a story about a contrarian view of economic policy.
...The problem, of course, is that Shlaes views are bunk. Eric Rauchway, who has labored to explain to folks why Shlaes should be ignored, writes:
The problem with Politico reporting of Amity Shlaes's Forgotten Man...is not that it's "they-said, she-said" journalism, but that it's an inadequate representation of the truth. It's not just Shlaes versus a famously shrill Nobelist and some dude at an ag university; it's Shlaes versus the accepted academic consensus.
As previously noted, if you were a sufficiently honest and competent researcher located like Amity Shlaes near any number of world-class reference libraries simply out to find out the unemployment rate in the 1930s, you would not find the data Shlaes cites; you would find, in the authoritative reference work, an explanation of why it's not best to cite the data Shlaes cites. Shlaes has to go out of her way to find other data.
Rauchway notes the obvious parallels -- press coverage long ago of the health effects of smoking, and press coverage now of the science of climate change. The way in which reporters write about the latter drives climate scientists insane; peer-reviewed, well-accepted scientific findings are routinely placed alongside the drivel published by think tanks funded by fossil fuel interests to protect fossil fuel interests. Andy Revkin at the New York Times had a blockbuster story to this effect just yesterday. Industry groups were told by their scientists over a decade ago that their climate change denialism wasn't supported by the facts, and yet they continued to fund organizations claiming the opposite. Revkin writes:
By questioning the science on global warming, these environmentalists say, groups like the Global Climate Coalition [which was financed by fossil fuel industries] were able to sow enough doubt to blunt public concern about a consequential issue and delay government action.
"They didn't have to win the argument to succeed," Mr. Monbiot said, "only to cause as much confusion as possible."...
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2009/04/25/what-good-is-the-news
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