Krugman reveals the NYT urged him to ‘lay off’ the Bush administration.
Krugman reveals the NYT urged him to ‘lay off’ the Bush administration.
On Friday at the Netroots Nation conference, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman spoke on a panel about “How the media learned to bend over backwards to please the right.” Krugman discussed the right wing’s success at pressuring the media and how some of that filtered down to him:
KRUGMAN: I could see a little bit of the effects. I was never told to stop writing what I was writing. It was, however, made known to me that I was making management nervous. There were occasional, “Couldn’t you do more straight economics writing?” Pretty much the last time I heard that was in 2005, when I was sort of urged to lay off a bit. The words that stuck in my mind were, “The election settled some of these things.” Basically that all stopped with Katrina, actually.
Watch it (approx. 19:00):
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Damn liberal media!
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:33 pmKRUGMAN:… It was, however, made known to me that I was making management nervous
- - Why the hell should NYT management be nervous about how ANY administration feels about them? Are they afraid someone like Dick Cheney won’t grant them a no-holds-barred sitdown interview? As if.
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:34 pmAin’t Bush fascism wonderful…
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:35 pmThe NYT publisher and editorial board have acted shamefully since 9/11.
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:36 pmThe Fourth Estate crumbles…
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:37 pmBadmoodman Says
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:34 pm
- - Why the hell should NYT management be nervous about how ANY administration feels about them? Are they afraid someone like Dick Cheney won’t grant them a no-holds-barred sitdown interview? As if.
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I think that at one time, losing access to the movers and shakers was the greatest fear of any of the media. But these days, being a news medium is more like being a businessman in Al Capone’s Chicago.
Let’s just say there’s more to be afraid of. This is the only reasonable explanation as to why our slightly Democratic majority in Congress continues to roll over and play dead for the GOP and why the various media do nothing with McCain except kiss his butt.
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:41 pmThere were occasional, “Couldn’t you do more straight economics writing?”
“Straight economics writing” begs for it to be printed that Chimpy is garbage in every arena , including on the economy ……..
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:41 pmThe “liberal” NYT?
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:43 pmWasn’t it a newspaper man who said this?
Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
What a concept.
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:44 pmIf it were up to me, I’d stick it to the administration and the Reich wing EVERY DAY AND IN EVERY WAY!
I am so sick of this librul NYT!!!
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:47 pmWhere are all the trolls who were whining this morning about how liberal the NYT was?
oh yeah. they’ve been shit-canned.
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:56 pmAnd like any good robot, Krugman did what he was told. Forget facts and perspective. Keep your eyes on the money and let the country be damned. This man is one reason why we are where we are. Is he still employed, after admitting to altering his independant viewpoint to suit the ‘new reality’ of the Bush administration? He shouldn’t be.
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:57 pmYeah, and if the NYT hadn’t sat on the story of Bush’s illegal electronic eavesdropping until after the election, the election might have settled them in a quite different way.
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:29 pmIf the Newspaper of record had told one of their rightwing columnists to lay off Bill Clinton the screaming by the rightwing would have knocked the Earth off its axis. This little game of playing the refs. Making media so afraid of being tagged with the liberal bias charge they cater to the rightwing. It shows such weakness that it is pathetic
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:03 pmHi Tiberius.
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:14 pmThe Republicans and the Bush gangsters electronically hacked, rigged and stole the 2004 Presidential Election by flipping some seven million votes from Kerry to Bush on Election Night.
The corporate media has been sitting on this story for the last several years. Somehow, the corporate media just doesn’t want to talk about GOP corporations rigging our elections.
Some of my comments back just after the Bush 2004 election theft:
The exit polls that showed a sweeping Senator Kerry Democratic election victory on November 2nd were right. Unfortunately, the 2004 Presidential election was cleanly stolen by Bush & Co. How, you say? With the help of Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia and SAIC, four interlocked secretive right-wing electronic voting machine manufacturers. We have entrusted the most important election task, that of actually counting and tabulating the vote totals to extremist organizations with secret proprietary vote-counting computer software with no auditable paper trail for hand recounts. How very convenient, how very clean, how very slick and with all the evidence of election rigging is buried deep on their computer hard drives.
Senator John F. Kerry won a landslide Democratic victory in the November 2, 2004 Presidential election by between two million and five million votes. The pre-election public opinion polls pointed to a large and growing Kerry election day majority and the election day exit polls also indicated a Kerry victory. Unfortunately, theocratic extremely right-wing computer election machine manufacturing corporations were in charge of “counting” the votes of millions and millions of Americans. Some how, a few million Kerry votes didn’t get counted and a few million bogus Bush votes showed up in the final election tallies and voile, a Bush “victory.”
Democracy in 21st century America has been kidnapped and destroyed by extreme right-wing control of the new secret computerized electronic vote counting systems. Verifiable hand-counted paper ballots are the only way to restore legitimate elections in America.
Just search the Internet for any terms such as “black box voting,” “Max Cleland,” “Diebold,” “Sequoia,” “SE&S,” “Greg Palest,” “election fraud” or “election theft” and you will find a wealth of information to help arm you in the coming fight to restore legitimate free elections and democracy in our country.
In 2002, the Republican Party staged their test run of controlling the new Diebold computerized paper-trail-free electronic voting systems that were installed in every precinct in the State of Georgia. It worked like a charm. Two popular Democratic incumbents, the Governor Roy Barnes and Senator Max Cleland, were both “defeated” by Republican challengers. The Democrats were both ahead by several points in both the pre-election voter opinion polls and in the election day exit polls, yet the Diebold voting machines declared the two Republican challengers as winners. The local media claimed to be “amazed” by this election “upset.” They should have been horrified and outraged. These elections were stolen electronically. There was no paper trail, no recount was possible and for good measure, Diebold Corporation “accidentally erased” the disputed 2002 election returns data from their computer hard disk drives a few days after the election. How convenient, how clean, how slick and how crooked is Republican election theft in the 21st century.
The 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections were both stolen by Bush & Company. The 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections will suffer the same fate unless we institute a complete and total return to traditional, verifiable hand-counted paper election ballots.
The Republican Party will never lose another Presidential election as long as we allow their corporate buddies to “count” our votes in secret.
Yours truly,
James K. Sayre
11 November 2004
Dump all the electronic computerized voting machines and electronic computerized vote tabulating machines into the nearest body of water. Return to the use of traditional hand-counted paper ballots in all future elections to restore our American democracy. As long as there are electronic, computerized voting machines and electronic computerized vote tabulating machines, there will Republican thugs, hackers and riggers ready to resteal, rig and hack any and all future elections.
On 6 January 2005, Senator Barbara Boxer and some thirty Representatives challenged the Ohio electoral vote in the special joint session of Congress, but they were barely scratching the surface of massive Republican election fraud across the country on November 2, 2004. This Presidential election was the most fraudulent in the past one hundred years.Widespread systematic premeditated voter disenfranchisement occurred in Ohio, Florida, New Mexico and many other states.
In the November 2004 Presidential election, some thirty million votes were cast electronically without any auditable paper trails. These insecure, hackable voting machines were built and operated by Diebold, ES&S, Sequois, Triad and SAIC, five secretive right-wing Republican voting machine manufacturers. About 3/4s of all our votes were then tabulated on insecure, hackable electronic tabulating machines by Diebold and ES&S, with proprietary (secret) software. Throw in the highly accurate exit polls which pointed to a landslide Kerry victory on November 2 and you have the perfect electoral fraud storm.
In 2002, the Republican Party staged their test run of controlling the new Diebold computerized paper-trail-free electronic voting systems that were installed in every precinct in the State of Georgia. It worked like a charm. Two popular Democratic incumbents, the Governor Roy Barnes and Senator Max Cleland, were both “defeated” by Republican challengers. The Democrats were both ahead by several points in both the pre-election voter opinion polls and in the election day exit polls, yet the Diebold voting machines declared the two Republican challengers as winners. The local media claimed to be “amazed” by this election “upset.” They should have been horrified and outraged. These elections were stolen electronically. There was no paper trail, no recount was possible and for good measure, Diebold Corporation “accidentally erased” the disputed 2002 election returns data from their computer hard disk drives a few days after the election. How convenient, how clean, how slick and how crooked is Republican election theft in the 21st century.
Australia, Canada and many other nations use the traditional hand-counted paper ballots in their national elections. Canada completes an honest vote count by hand, usually within 24-hours of the closing of the voting booths. Can’t we Americans wait for a few hours to get an honest, open, legitimate election vote count?
We will never get our democracy back until all the computerized voting machines are unceremoniously dumped into the nearest body of water. Traditional hand-counted paper ballots will restore our democracy and help end this national nightmare of Tsunami Bush.
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:14 pmHe also mentions this in his book!! Conscience of a Liberal.
July 22nd, 2008 at 7:39 pmThe “liberal media” indeed. Would have been nice if Krugman had spoken up a couple years ago. I have definitely seen a change in his columns. But, you know, I bet there are a couple hundred young, and not so young, economists out there who could damn well speak up about how stupid all of the McCain/Bush policies are. We are on the edge of a very dangerous economic cliff and most people don’t have a clue. Otherwise, we are looking at Reaganomics for another 4 years. Comforting, isn’t it?
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:17 pmMark Twain once wrote that you should never make enemies with anyone who buys ink by the barrel. He couldn’t have foreseen the collaborationist NYT, WaPo, etc. They deserve their onrushing demise.
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:32 pmSure Tiberius that is what people THINK as that is what the rightwing screechmonkeys have been telling them to think for a couple of decades. Yes brainwashing does work on a lot of people if the silly zombie meme is allowed to become conventional wisdom. This is in no way evidence it is TRUE. In fact it ISNT true any real scrutiny shows that the media is very much in the tank for McSame. If an Obama advisor had called Americans whiners and shown how out of touch they were on the economy as did Phil Gramm the media would have gone into a feeding frenzy. Yes the righting liars have convinced a lot of people that they sky isnt blue afterall. IT IS however a blue sky.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:52 amHAS EVERYBODY FORGOTTEN HOW THE AUGUST, SUPPOSEDLY LIBERAL, NEW YORK TIMES KOWTOWED TO THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IN HELPING TO HYPE THE WAR? WASN’T THAT WOMAN’S NAME JUDITH MILLER? COME ON, GUYS, WHAT’S THE BIG SURPRISE? AND, BY THE WAY, IT DIDN’T STOP WITH KATRINA. THE NEW YORK TIMES SEEMS TO HAVE LOST THE WORD ‘LIAR’ WHEN IT COMES TO DESCRIBING BUSH’S OUTRIGHT DISTORTIONS AND, FOR THAT MATTER, UNTIL RECENTLY, MCCAIN.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:57 amI greatly appreciate Paul Krugman’s articles, but cannot help wondering what if he had made this known “back then”? Why hold this significant information for how many years?
I find this extremely disappointing given the profond damage done to democracy day after day after day. The long litany of crimes commited against the American people and the world speaks for itself. The American people who have been improvished and reduced to silence while the pundits theorize to uphold the abberations against our humanity and intellect commited every day in our name.
I do not pay Mr. Krugman’s salary so can make no demand on his integrity - that is his affair.
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:02 amThese stories about administration pressure always make me wonder what kind of dirt the Bush Administration had on Reid and Pelosi to make them “take impeachment off the table”?
July 24th, 2008 at 5:28 am