Media Matters released a new study that tracked the amount of economists that participated on the three major cable news outlets, CNN, MSNBC and Fox during the debt-ceiling debate. You would figure the balance would be roughly two to one against economists who would be able to explain the debt-ceiling debate because cable news has become so tabloid-like, but if you thought that, you'd be way off.

A Media Matters analysis of evening cable news programs reveals that just 4.1 percent of guests who discussed the debt-ceiling debate were actual economists. This lack of credible economic experts helped create a media environment in which political and media figures could spread misinformation.

On August 2, President Obama signed the Budget Control Act, a controversial compromise bill that raised the nation's debt ceiling in order to avoid default while also cutting government spending by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.

Many economists criticized the deal, saying that budget cuts would only weaken the economy and further drive up unemployment. But their voices were largely absent from CNN's, Fox News', and MSNBC's coverage of the debt-ceiling negotiations.

Of the 1,258 guest appearances during segments that discussed the issue in the month leading up to the debt deal, only 52 -- or 4.1 percent -- were made by economists.

I have no problem with activists and pundits being given air time for their opinions, but these shows market themselves as "news" and should have a responsibility to inform the public on very important topics. Economic policy is very difficult for many Americans to understand on a basic level even though the debt-ceiling travesty was by far one of the easiest concepts to grasp.

The definition of "economist" used in this study is broad -- it includes any guest with an advanced degree in economics or who has served as an economics professor at the college or university level. It also includes guests who have worked as government economists (such as Ben Stein, who formerly "worked as an economist at The Department of Commerce").

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Mediaite's Colby Hall complains to the world that Chuck Todd called Andrew Breitbart a conservative propagandist.

What was rather remarkable was Todd’s reference to Andrew Breitbart as a “conservative propagandist,” which is interesting in that it not only aims to marginalize the Internet provocateur, but is a clear effort to diminish Breitbart’s influence moving forward.

According to reference.com, “propaganda” is defined as “information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.” Given what we now know about how the Shirley Sherrod scandal, this appears not only to be true, but pretty much what Breitbart has admitted himself (though his candor has been lauded by some unlikely media personalities.) But does Todd, who’s goal is to be an “objective reporter,” really want to get involved with the Cable News/Internet name calling?

Apparently so – and we will delight in covering his participation.

Isn't Todd actually doing his job? He called Breitbart exactly what he is. How is that not being an objective reporter? Oh, that's considered name-calling. Why did Colby Hall even bother writing this post? Man, my head hurts from the stupidity. Please criticize the MSM when they actually deserve it.

I wonder how Colby Hall would want Chuck to describe Breitbart? Take a shot.

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Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and her misbegotten immigration law, SB1070, may be popular with Arizonans looking for a handy scapegoat right now, but they may not be so popular a little down the road, after they've completely destroyed what's left of the state's economy.

KPHO-TV in Phoenix, for instance, found that her fearmongering about "headless corpses" was driving tourists away from the state in droves:

Veronica and Richard Schultz have owned the guest ranch for the past 14 years. The operation’s close proximity to the border used to be a selling point for guests. Now, it’s more of a repellent.

“We’ve definitely lost guests and we've had guests call us. We’ve had friends call us from all over the country and say, ‘Hey, are you safe?’” Richard Schultz said.

Between the economy and boycotts related to Arizona’s tough new immigration law, SB 1070, tourism in the state is down 10 percent.

The Shultzes said state politicians are not helping matters. Every day on cable news, anchors and reporters are discussing an invasion at the border, headless bodies in the desert or a rash of kidnappings.

During this election cycle, Arizona politicians are touting the potential dangers of illegal immigration. Gov. Jan Brewer is one of the loudest voices.

She has made several statements to the national media, the validity of which CBS 5 Investigates could not confirm. The governor told one media outlet that almost all illegal immigrants are bringing drugs across the border. U.S. Border Patrol officials said that statement is false.

Brewer also said law enforcement officials have found decapitated bodies in the desert. Calls to all of Arizona’s border county medical examiners revealed no decapitated bodies have been reported to them.

You've also gotta love how, when asked about her rhetoric in the segment above, Brewer simply fled. She must be getting her lessons in media relations from Sharron Angle.

Then there was the LA Times piece reporting how Latinos are fleeing the state in droves -- and how it's killing businesses:

No one has measured the effect of SB 1070 on businesses, or the number of immigrants it has prompted to leave Arizona. But merchants say the repercussions are clear — not just in how it's prompted many families to leave the state, but scared others enough to curtail their regular activities.

"The economy's already bad, but on top of it [SB 1070] is like a bullet in the head to us," said Osameh Odeh, 35, whose Eden Wear clothing store was empty one recent afternoon. "People don't come out of their houses anymore."

Of course, we not only predicted this outcome, we reported on its early manifestations already awhile back. You know the political price for this may be a steep one -- considering that wrecking the economy is not usually a popular outcome. Even Judge Bolton's ruling, staving off the law's enactment, can't prevent these outcomes.

And it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.

Be forewarned, this video is disturbing and NSFW, language-wise. It is a real-time record of a shootout between the California Highway Patrol and an angry, well-armed man. While much of the visual is very dark, there's no question about what's going on. It was posted by Twitter user MannyBlack, who shot the video from his window during the shootout.

The shooter, Byron Williams, was shot by police during the gun battle and is in serious, but stable condition according to local news sources.

What is most disturbing about this is the emergent theme that Williams was angry at government, further stirred up by his unemployment and cable news. Whether this theme plays out as facts emerge, this much is clear: He was well-armed, well-armored, and looking to do harm to someone.

An early report from SFGate.com:

As officers walked toward the pickup, they saw the man pick up a handgun, police said. They said they returned gunfire and radioed for help.

Three CHP vehicles had their windows shot out, but no officers were shot, police said. They said the driver was armed with a rifle and a shotgun as well as the handgun and fired at least two of the weapons during the shootout.

Morgan said the driver was hit numerous times and survived only because he was wearing a bullet-resistant vest.

As more details emerged, it was clear that this man was not simply a guy with a pistol in his truck. He caught the attention of officers for weaving in and out of traffic, cause for a routine stop.

The Tuolumne County man opened fire on two CHP officers who pulled him over on westbound Interstate 580 near Grand Avenue a few minutes before midnight, and continued shooting for several minutes with a high powered rifle before 10 officers returned fire and seriously wounded him, despite body armor he was wearing, CHP Sgt. Trent Cross said.

Cross said Byron Williams, a 45-year-old Groveland resident, was found with a pistol, a shotgun, the rifle, a bullet-resistant vest and a suspicious object that prompted investigators to call a bomb squad to the scene. The object was detonated without mishap in the center divide of the freeway, which cause headache nightmares throughout the East Bay.

"There is no doubt in our mind, given the body armor and the extensive amount of ammunition he had, that he was on his way to do a very serious crime against either someone or a group of people," Cross said. [read more...]

Williams is a convicted felon with two strikes. He was on parole and if stopped, would have been charged with a third-strike felony. However, police believe he was motivated by anti-government sentiments.

His background, coupled with the presence of possible explosives, was enough to prompt the FBI to get involved in the investigation, Cross said.

"Right now, this is not being looked at as a domestic terrorism case," Cross said Sunday afternoon. "But there's more evidence to go through, and that could change."

Among that evidence was a white three-ring binder recovered from the truck by a bomb squad robot. Scrawled by hand on the cover of the binder was the word, "California." Officials would not describe the contents of the binder.

His mother says that he was upset by the "left-wing Congress":

Williams' mother, Janice Williams of Groveland, said her son had been living next door and taking care of her father's house and land. She said he had been released from prison about 2 1/2 years ago after a felony conviction, which she declined to describe, and had almost completed his parole.

"He hasn't been able to get a job because he's an ex-felon and nobody will hire him," she said.

She said her son, who had been a carpenter and a cabinetmaker before his imprisonment, was angry about his unemployment and about "what's happening to our country."

Williams watched the news on television and was upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items," his mother said. [Read more]

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California officials have opened an investigation into Goldline, the stalwart Glenn Beck Show advertiser, favorite of Mick Huckabee and other apocalyptic types. ABC's Nightline picked right up on it and did a report tonight (video above).

This idea of buying gold in tough financial times isn't new. What is new is the high-profile pimping of it on cable news. Not only in ads, but as part of the message like Glenn Beck's "God, Gold and Guns". Using typical scare tactics, Beck recommends buying gold as a hedge against the government's ultimate financial armageddon.

Goldline's business is simple: They buy and sell precious metals, specializing in numismatic gold coins. Investigators are looking specifically at whether Goldline International misrepresents pricing policies on its collectible coins, inflating them when they're purchased and deflating them when they're sold.

Goldline's management team should know about financial armageddon. They were right in the center of one in 1986, when some of them worked for Valley State Bank's Collateral Loan Division.

Valley State Bank

Two of Goldline's executive team -- Mark Albarian and Joel Gabrelow -- were officers of Valley State Bank's Collateral Loan Division from 1984-1986. Gabrelow was also Vice President of Numismatic Lending at West Coast Bank.

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Bipartisan Budget Woes Rear Window Ethics

The conservative Heritage Foundation and the more liberal Brookings Institute sat down jointly yesterday to explain that in less than 40 years, if taxes are not raised and spending is not cut, the United States economy will near collapse as the country will be only capable of paying interest on the growing federal debt.

Meanwhile the White House has been touting the fact that the deficit will shrink in the next year. What both groups that spoke yesterday agree on is the fact that after the few years of possible deficit shrinkage (for lack of a better word), it will skyrocket after that.

What ever happened to worrying about future generations? Didn't leadership in both parties talk about that a lot in the not too distant past? Just a few years later all they seem to be able to do is worry about Terri Schiavo and a handful of judges, while they happen to pass a pork-filled highway bill without anyone noticing. Washington Post: Almost Unnoticed, Bipartisan Budget Anxiety

BALANCE, CABLE NEWS–STYLE

via Tapped ...Nothing quite captures the storied revolving-door problem in American political punditry like seeing old Watergate players themselves (or, in the case of Pat Buchanan, not a Watergate participant but certainly a loyal Richard Nixon soldier) playing disinterested pundit-analysts on one talking-head show after another discussing Mark Felt. At this point maybe it shouldn’t seem so bizarre to me to see Chris Matthews chatting with G. Gordon Liddy about this story as if they were David Brinkley and Chet Huntley chewing over the day’s headlines.

That these characters have carte blanche on the cable chat shows to serve as credible Felt naysayers is just one more illustration of the wonderful cloak of immunity enjoyed by all right-wingers in the clubby, insular D.C. punditry world. Lying, stealing, prison time -- literally nothing can discredit a conservative gabber enough to cancel their membership card to the commentariat. And today we have Peggy Noonan to thank for granting some establishment pundit legitimacy to Ben Stein’s thoughtful Deep Throat-as-genocidaire thesis. Can’t wait to hear Liddy’s thoughts on it tonight on Hardball.

via That Colored Fellas : By La Shawn Barberella

The execution of this poor woman by ‘activist judges’, abortion-on-demand crazed lesbos at Planned Parenthood and Black Liberals who hate me but still read my blog, has now increased demand from the cable networks for my on-air insight and analysis! Such a reflection of my increasing popularity has forced me to hire the veteran publicist/media advisor Bumble Ward, who also represents the famous Director Tim Burton.

With my many appearances on MSNBC’s Connected Coast To Coast, I can now tell you my dear readers that CNN is now the only anti-American cable news network left! read on

The Right Is Wrong and Small As Well

With every national poll (83% opposed) condemning government interference in the Terry Shiavo matter you would think by the immense media presence of supporting talking heads that the reverse was actually true. In fact, no case in recent memory (possibly Elian Gonzales) has demonstrated the enormousimbalance between the vocal pundits of the lunatic fringe right wing and their actual lack of support bymainstream Americans.

All week long, pundit after pundit from the Right, followed politician after politician from the Right, by inundating the national media with twisted rationale and downright lies and smears of the innocent people just doing the civic jobs in a fully functioning Democracy. From one court loss to the next, the panicking pubescent pundits of the Right leaped from one cable news show to the next. An uninformed observer might believe by viewing these manic media performances that this group represented a gigantic swath of the voting populace in America. But when the dark star dust settled, there was simply no one home. In fact, no poll number in the recent history of Red State/Blue State divisive battles has reached as high as the 80% region. Clearly, the American people have spoken.

The problem is, the lunatic fringe on the right couldn't care less.

emailed by Mark G

WHAT CAN ONE SAY?

via Sam Rosenfeld

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said this yesterday about Terri Schiavo:

Like other Republican lawmakers championing Schiavo's bill, DeLay often suggests she is alert and potentially treatable.
"She talks and she laughs and she expresses likes and discomforts," he said Sunday evening. "It won't take a miracle to help Terri Schiavo. It will only take the medical care and therapy that patients require."

For those keeping score at home, that statement is a straight-up, non-fungible, unambiguous, and utterly unconscionable lie. And if you were watching cable news yesterday (as I was), it’s probably safe to say you never heard anyone call DeLay out on it, or any number of similarly, knowingly fallacious statements spewing forth from the mouths of our national political leaders.
(Via The Stakeholder.)