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How journos get it wrong

Whilst it is true that Paul Krugman writes a regular op-ed column for The New York Times - and darn good ones at that! - he isn't a journalist.   He is the winner of a Nobel Prize for economics.

In a piece "Policy Indifference" in the Times he, rightly, takes journalists to task.

"One crucial thing you need to understand about political journalists is that with some honorable exceptions, they don’t know or care about actual policy. In a way, that makes sense — the skills needed to cultivate contacts, to get the inside scoop on what’s going on in Congressional scheming or campaign war rooms, are very different from the skills needed to interpret CBO spreadsheets. The problem, however, is that all too often political journalists mistake the theater of policy for reality (or don’t care about the difference)."

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