Don't Read Newsweek, It's No Better Than A Supermarket Tabloid
Paul Krugman has the facts -- something that Newsweek (No, I'm not going to link to it) apparently thought was totally unimportant and unnecessary in its current cover story -- here.
After the author -- former McCain advisor Niall Ferguson -- incorrectly wrote in that story that health care reform would increase the deficit, Krugman set the record straight. Here's the money quote:
But anyone who actually read, or even skimmed, the CBO report (pdf) knows that it found that the ACA would reduce, not increase, the deficit — because the insurance subsidies were fully paid for.
Here's more direct criticism of the story.
Joe Weisenthal in The Business Insider
The story is garbage; a screed that deliberately misstates facts and as far as I'm concerned disqualifies the author from being taken seriously ever again.
But that fact that Newsweek would publish it without fact checking calls into question its seriousness as even an opinion magazine (It's clearly no longer has anything to do with news). It allowed one of it's writers to lie. That makes it no better than the National Enquirer.
Hey. Stop insulting the National Enquirer!
National Enquirer reports don't lie per se. If you read the stories, you'll generally find the paper contains (1) a lot of small pieces straight off the AP wire, (2) some gossip, horoscope, and other entertainment, and (3) articles that report their sensationalist headline fairly objectively--roughly, "Mr. Tweed declared he had been abducted by Venusians, eat asparagus, and made to impregnate Sasquatch. His doctors could find no sign of this, but could not rule out the possibility."--accompanied by a bromide from a practicing scientist. ("It seems unlikely that intercourse with another species could produce viable offspring," Professor Tom Easton of the Thomas College of Maine noted.)
National Enquirer writers are, in short, in on the joke, just as Ritchie Blackmore declares "It's always a pleasure to work with a brilliant musician" in the liner notes to William Shatner's recent double-disc.
Newsweek's editors are not so self-aware.
Don't Insult The Enquirer
The news weekly's are dying. Staff has been pruned and will be pruned even more. They are the walking dead. The internet claims another victim.
This Ferguson clown gives an
This Ferguson clown gives an excellent reason for not subscribing to Newsweek.