Saturday, August 20, 2011

Dean Baker gives Kudos for a Media Outlet that Gets the News Right

This is rare. Here is Dean Baker in his Beat the Press blog toasting the AP news service for getting a story right:
AP Gets It Right! The Recession Caused the Deficit

AP did what news organizations are supposed to do; it checked the numbers and showed that politicians yelling about "out of control spending," don't know what they are talking about or are making things up. Its FACT CHECK, printed in the NYT, showed that the deficit exploded because of the recession. There was no issue of out of control spending prior to the increases for programs like unemployment insurance and other spending needed to counteract the effect of the downturn. AP gets an "A" for this one.
Now, if only the other news media picked up on this story maybe Americans could get out of the grips of the deadly Republican idiocy about deficits and debts being "the #1 problem" in the US and get back to the real problem: unemployment!

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