Hoisted from Comments: J. Thomas on the Ethics of William Greider
In the comments, J. Thomas writes:
Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong: [William Greider says] "Supply-side economics was a scandal from the beginning."
Sure, except a whole lot of fools believed in it. Responsible economists said it couldn't possibly balance the budget. Fools believed otherwise.
Greider sent his reporters out to interview Stockman, and Stockman told them the budget was going to be balanced. Stockman told Greider personally that there was no way the budget was going to be balanced. Greider told his reporters to say "Stockman says there's no problem, balanced budget, everything's fine" and to also say something along the lines of "Some left-wing economists disagree". When Stockman himself had told Greider himself that it was lies.
If Greider had told his reporters "The headline for today's article is "Supplyside Scandal Exposed" and they were supposed to point out known administration lies as lies and use the word "scandal" at least 4 times per article....
But he didn't. The articles he edited encouraged fools to continue acting like fools. He got the truth straight from Stockman's mouth and he reported the lies instead.
Is there something about these events that you don't believe? Is there something about my interpretation that you disagree with? If you agree the events happened, what interpretation leaves Greider a nonhack?
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
