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> For example, here is The New York Times for March 6, the day Dick Farson told me I was giving this talk. The column one story for that day concerns Bush’s tar
by noego 7y ago
> For example, here is The New York Times for March 6, the day Dick Farson told me I was giving this talk. The column one story for that day concerns Bush’s tariffs on imported steel. Now we read: Mr. Bush’s action “is likely to send the price of steel up sharply, perhaps as much as ten percent…” American consumers “will ultimately bear” higher prices. America’s allies “would almost certainly challenge” the decision. Their legal case “could take years to litigate in Geneva, is likely to hinge” on thus and such.
> You may read this tariff story and think, what’s the big deal? The story’s not bad. Isn’t it reasonable to talk about effects of current events in this way? I answer, absolutely not. Such speculation is a complete waste of time. It’s useless. It’s bullshit on the front page of the Times.
His argument is that the media should only discuss whatever has happened already, and should absolutely never mention any expert opinion on how today's events will impact the near future? Saying that steel tariffs will likely to send the price of steel up sharply, perhaps as much as ten percent, is now "bullshit on the front page of the Times"?
I've read almost every one of his books and loved them. But this is a great example of how expertise in one field seldom translates to other fields.
- abtinf 7y agoYes, it's "bullshit on the front page of the Times". Now, I happen to agree that tariffs may cause prices to increase. I've been educated in economics and study it as a hobby; I can explain my point-of-view from the concrete facts to the high level theory. The most definitive statement I would ever be willing to say on the subject is that tariffs always harm the economic, moral, and political interests of the citizens of the country imposing them. If someone tells you, without further qualification (as is nearly always the case for TV and newspaper pundits), that a tariff of x% will cause a price change of y%, they are either incompetent or they are lying to your face in order to advance a hidden agenda. It is a vastly complicated question that requires detailed analysis of financial flows, specific industries, interacting policies of many nations, and geography. And it matters a whole helluva lot. The improper speculation about the consequences of current tariffs are precisely what give Trump and his cabinet the intellectual cover to make outlandish claims like "our tariffs are being paid for by China."
- foldingmoney 7y ago>If someone tells you, without further qualification (as is nearly always the case for TV and newspaper pundits), that a tariff of x% will cause a price change of y%, they are either incompetent or they are lying to your face in order to advance a hidden agenda. That's unfair. First of all, their interviewer probably demanded that they give a quotable figure, because the readers want some quick concrete takeaways and not a lesson in economics and uncertainty. And just because they didn't give further qualification (or it didn't make it into the quote) doesn't mean they didn't consider all of those things. I think you risk being guilty of making disingenuous assumptions about them in the same way that you're accusing them of making disingenuous assumptions about economics. >The improper speculation about the consequences of current tariffs are precisely what give Trump and his cabinet the intellectual cover to make outlandish claims like "our tariffs are being paid for by China." They certainly are being paid (in part) by China, and appear to be having the desired effect of shifting US supply chains away from China. If they only hurt American businesses and consumers and didn't affect China at all, then China wouldn't be responding with retaliatory tariffs on American goods. And I presume you don't think that China's retaliatory tariffs only hurt the Chinese.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- asdff 7y agoI am a little irked about how print often has no citations and therefore little further reading if something is really interesting. Sure there are backlinks, but if I wrote an essay like some of these journalists write an article, I'd fail the class. How hard is it to add a footnote here or there? Surely graduates of the school of journalism are familiar with Turabian.
- blacksqr 7y agoWe might be living in a very different country and world if the New York Times had refrained from speculating on topics like Whitewater, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Benghazi...
- noego 7y agoShould NYTimes also refrain from speculating on topics like climate change? Ie, until climate change actually happens, all mention of climate change should be omitted entirely from all newspapers?
- blacksqr 7y agoBack in the old days, there was a clearly-defined place in a newspaper for speculation: the op-ed page. Got no problem with it there. The problem comes when you play shell games with news and speculation on the front page.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- caseysoftware 7y agoWe could settle this if the media and pundits documented their predictions and tracked how often they were correct. Imagine knowing a particular pundit was right 99% of the time! When he/she spoke, I'd listen and invest accordingly.
- asdff 7y agoYou could settle it right now with a clever script. Every article has an author. Start crawling.
- asdff 7y agoI agree with Crichton here, and I'm someone who gets all my news from print. Interestingly enough, you don't see experts speculate like this in their respective fields. When postulations are made in the sciences, they are highly cautious and filled with disclaimers, just short of saying 'we are probably completely wrong until someone physically proves what we are spouting about here in the second to last paragraph of the manuscript.' But in the nyt, you don't get these disclaimer sentences surrounding the speculation. You get "Tarrifs feared to raise steel prices as high as 10%" boldface in the headline, and that's all most people really see. If you have a communications degree, don't give me your theories on macroeconomics. Stay in your lane, and keep the analysis in the macroeconomics journals. The job of the reporter is to report, not read tea leaves. My theory why nyt and other papers do this baseless speculation that they aren't qualified to make: game retail traders.