# Is BBC anti-war spin causing more casualties than necessary? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 27, 2003, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415 "2003-03-27T00:18:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![TV\_time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f17d59/32.png) [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2003, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/101 "2003-03-29T23:59:55Z")
The other evening I heard Bill O’Rielly (sp) on Fox say that the BBC was putting out anti-war propaganda and everybody knows that his program is a “no-spin zone” so it must be true. Oh, by the way – I also believe in Santa Claus. I’m sure once we get those questionable elements removed from the BBC, they’ll tow the American line like good little “willing” partners. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Kumquat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gary\_Kumquat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Kumquat)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/102 "2003-03-30T08:07:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by december \* > \*\*Note that accusations of anti-war bias are widespread, as I have shown. Lord William Rees-Mogg, in the Times. Credentialed letter-writers in the Times. Noted columnist Andrew Sullivan. The BBC’s own embedded correspondent in Iraq. But, the BBC has not chosen to debate any of these parties. E.g., it would be most interesting to have a debate in the Times between Lord Rees-Mogg and the BBC on whether they have an anti-war bias. Or, a similar debate on Sullivan’s blog. The OP had a fair amount of evidence of bias. \*\* You have provided absolutely no evidence, other than opinion. Furthermore you have no response to the fact that the BBS is being accused of bias by both sides, something obviously contrary to your claim they are one-sided. You have not defended my earlier question on the two instances you tried to cite (wrongly) as bias. You then tried to present their defending themselves against accusations of being pro war as anti war bias. In short, your OP is unfounded to the point where I wonder if you are being deliberately misleading. Should you actually bother to present any evidence for your claim I would be happy to debate the issue, but till then there is nothing to say. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/103 "2003-03-30T10:43:21Z")
**december** , I have assiduously stayed out of this debate until now, because you and I have had a similar discussion about the BBC before, with no conclusions drawn. But your revelation that your opinions are largely formed by right-wing op-eds with axes to grind, rather than observation of the media that you are criticising, leaves me rather surprised. Before you start one of these threads again, how about watching BBC News 24 on satellite or cable (if available to you), or alternatively listening to the BBC World Service (you can get it on shortwave, some [US-based relays](http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/americas/radio/newjersey_1.shtml), and over realaudio on the web - you can choose the [World Service](http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/worldservice_promo.shtml) itself [mixed content and news], or the [24-hour rolling World Service news](http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/ram/live_news.ram), or indeed the Beeb’s [other radio channels](http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/) from the UK. There are also various TV news reports you can watch on streaming realvideo at [http://news.bbc.co.uk](http://news.bbc.co.uk) ). If you still have the same criticisms, by all means do come back and debate, but until you have actually observed that which you’re attacking, your arguments will seem rather hollow - to me at least. ---
**Author:** ![Futile\_Gesture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/104 "2003-03-30T13:04:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by december \* > \*\*The BBC story casts doubt on Blair’s description of the deaths as “executions,” but it does not express any doubt on the Iraqi spokesmen’s denials. \*\* :smack: Did you read the report? The BBC is reporting the facts, there is no editorial whatsoever. The “doubt” was cast by the British Army and the Armed Forces Minister, not the BBC. Since this is a change in position from what Blair said previously it is reasonable to believe, unless the Army and Blair’s ministers have all turned on him, that they are retracting his early description of ‘executions’. So in this case the British Army, British Government & Iraqis are all in agreement; no executions. Is it the responsibility BBC to pick the pro-war banner and declare, without any further evidence, and despite what the Army and Government say, there is still reason to believe that the Iraqi’s may be lying? Perhaps they also credit their readers with more intelligence and the ability to make up their own minds. So they don’t have put on a reminder every time an Iraqi is quoted; “He may be lying.” ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/105 "2003-03-30T18:19:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Futile Gesture \* > \*\*So in this case the British Army, British Government & Iraqis are all in agreement; no executions. Is it the responsibility BBC to pick the pro-war banner and declare, without any further evidence, and despite what the Army and Government say, there is still reason to believe that the Iraqi’s may be lying? \*\* I came away with a different conclusion: these soldiers were most likely executed. After all, that’s what the most recent quote in the article said. > [@](#): > > Speaking later, the prime minister’s official spokesman acknowledged there was not absolute proof they were executed but claimed that “every piece of information points towards the men having been executed in a brutal fashion”. The armed forces Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram expressed his “regret” for any distress caused, and said > [@](#): > > Given the information available to us, it did indicate that those two soldiers may have been executed. The evidence in the article that the men were not executed is a quote from the sister of one of the soldiers, who says her brother’s Colonel told her that. Of course, that’s heresay. Also, the evidence of an execution may not have been as clear at the time the Colonel spoke to her. The other evidence of no execution is the Iraqi denial, which has no credibility. The facts included in the article leave it likely, but not certain, that the men were executed. Why did **Futile Gesture** come away with the opposite impression? Perhaps bercause of the article’s spin or reporting bias, which is what this thread is about. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/106 "2003-03-30T19:27:43Z")
—The facts included in the article leave it likely, but not certain, that the men were executed. Why did Futile Gesture come away with the opposite impression? Perhaps bercause of the article’s spin or reporting bias, which is what this thread is about.— How can you have it both ways: use the article to draw a conclusion that the men were executed, and then accuse the article of trying to get people to draw a different conclusion? That’s not even Sullivan’s line of criticism: he claims that Blair and the Iraqis are both presented, and that Blair is given skepticism, but the Iraqis are not. But that’s simply not how the story reads at all. Indeed, there is no reason not to read the statements by the government about the evidence from which they drew their conclusion, which present the actual evidence, AS a skeptical refutation of the Iraqi denial. I have no idea what FG is on about, but given that he seems to think there is some “pro-war agenda” behind saying the Iraqis executed soldiers, I would say he’s the one with a bias, not the article. ---
**Author:** ![Mandelstam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Mandelstam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mandelstam)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/107 "2003-03-30T20:11:15Z")
Since most of us in this debate know that **december** is unlikely to change his views (or even listen to the BBC on his own), I thought I’d throw out a few thoughts for general discussion. First, I’m struck by the idea that Murdoch seems to be using the war as an occasion to blast the BBC with every instrument in his bag. Over in the UK _The Sun_ and the _the Times_ seem to have been enlisted in the cause, while here in the States (from what I understand from other threads) Fox News seems to be reporting the BBC’s anti-war bias as a matter of record. One post even gave me the impression that Fox was responsible for the analogy between the BBC and Al-Jazeera. Does anyone know if this is true? If so, this leads me to wonder about Sullivan. I know he appears on TV as a pundit but I don’t know if he has a regular gig or with whom. Is he perhaps a regular or frequent horse in the the Fox stable? Second, the BBC World Service has begun urging listeners to use some sort of text messaging system that they’ve set up for listeners to send off comments on the spot. I’ve never noticed this before and wonder if it’s quite new. **december** , if you’re still reading, the time to listen for yourself has never been better! You not only have the chance to form your own independent judgment, but also to relay your concerns directly to the evildoers in question. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/108 "2003-03-30T22:08:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mandelstam \* > **Does anyone know if this is true? If so, this leads me to wonder about Sullivan. I know he appears on TV as a pundit but I don’t know if he has a regular gig or with whom. Is he perhaps a regular or frequent horse in the the Fox stable?** He has a column every week in the (Murdoch-owned) London Sunday Times. Outside that, I have never come across him before, though it appears from what **december** is saying that he has a blog. One thing I’ve noticed about his column is that over the last year it has turned from an informative column about the machinations of Washington politics into a regular polemic. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/109 "2003-03-30T22:20:18Z")
He’s a big proponent of blogging as a new force in media. He’s also an author. I don’t know if he’s made big inroads into being a Tv pundit, but it’s an obvious direction in that line of work. —One thing I’ve noticed about his column is that over the last year it has turned from an informative column about the machinations of Washington politics into a regular polemic.— Hmm… sounds familiar to a certain Princeton-based economist… ---
**Author:** ![Mandelstam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Mandelstam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mandelstam)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/110 "2003-03-30T22:31:40Z")
_“Hmm… sounds familiar to a certain Princeton-based economist…”_ I dunno **Apos**. I don’t know how Sullivan’s column matches up to his blog but if the former resembles the latter than the comparison to Krugman seems most unfair. Even at his most polemical Krugman rarely fails to deliver a valuable piece of information about or analysis of the economy. (Why just the other day I decided to refinance my mortgage based on one of his columns. 😉 ) Thanks for that info **jjimm** , so now we have it: Sullivan is on the Murdoch payroll. **december** , are your ears ringing? **Please explain why so far there is _not one single source for your wild allegations against the BBC that hasn’t been in some way financed by Rupert Murdoch_–who has a well-known economic interest in discrediting that public-financed competitor.** ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/111 "2003-03-30T22:32:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Apos \* > \*\*Hmm… sounds familiar to a certain Princeton-based economist… \*\* Please can you edumacate this foreigner… ---
**Author:** ![Mandelstam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Mandelstam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mandelstam)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/112 "2003-03-30T22:44:16Z")
Since I’m still on hand, **jjimm** , I’'ll direct you to [Paul Krugman’s latest NYT column](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/28/opinion/28KRUG.html). I’d say this one is entirely typical in its tying of an economic analysis to a critique of the Bush administration (often the critique is of a corrupt corporate behemoth such as Enron). Here’s my take on Paul K, FWIW. In the Clinton days he was so on board that he mainly came across as a moderate. His views on the globalization status quo, given that the man in an economist, were particularly frustrating, IMO (though not nearly as bad as those of Thomas Friedman, another NYT columnist who has articulated his own species of pro-war arguments). Since Bush has been at the helm, revealing that he is not a moderate conservative, but actually a fairly radical one (especially on foreign policy), Krugman has come across more and more as a fire-breathing liberal dragon. He has also reversed some of his dogmatic positions on globalization in the wake of events in Argentina, et al. Speaking purely for myself, I almost always agree with him because, like him, I find Bush’s rightwing radicalism wrongheaded at its best, and terrifying at its worst. But **Apos** doubtless will offer a quite different opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/113 "2003-03-30T22:59:16Z")
I really respected Krugman’s critiques of the excesses of many diatribes against globalization, and don’t think he’s changed his positions there much at all (I hardly see what you mean about Argentina: that was not a case of globalization, but rather the dangers of certain financial and currency policies in regards to development: a subject Krugman has warned about before). He was hardly “on board” with the Clinton administration: he wrote several books which criticize its foriegn industrial policies as hogwash akin to supply-side economics. But his collumns (especially when he was back on Slate) used to be about a multitude of subjects, dealing out damage to anyone in either party he thought was playing fast and loose with economics: or not playing at all. Now they are almost exclusively about how horrid Bush is. While I don’t disagree with him on that, his obsessive focus on the administration has taken him overboard at times, and certainly makes him fit the mold of turning from broad collumnist to focused partisan pundit. I look to Steven Landsburg for my dose of “smart-ass economist iconoclast” these days. ---
**Author:** ![Mandelstam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Mandelstam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mandelstam)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/114 "2003-03-30T23:09:20Z")
**Apos** : _"I really respected Krugman’s critiques of the excesses of many diatribes against globalization, and don’t think he’s changed his positions there much at all (I hardly see what you mean about Argentina: that was not a case of globalization, but rather the dangers of certain financial and currency policies in regards to development: a subject Krugman has warned about before). "_ FYI **Apos** , when I say the “globalization status quo” I refer to the dogmas about globalization perpetuated by and through institutions such as the IMF: the so-called Washington consensus (though I know that that the coherence of that term can be contested). As a set of dogmas, the “globalization status quo” is entirely to do with the “dangers of certain financial and currency policies in regards to deelopment.” And Krugman went on record in one of his columns as having second thoughts about those policies, IIRC, with respect to Argentina. (Somewhere on the web his columns are archived, but as this is hijack and my break times are limited, I’m not going to dig it out.) I can see your point about Krugman not being _entirely_ on board with Clinton: but many of his columns gave that impression. In any case, I look forward to returning to this kind of dialogue on some other day. For the moment the neo-liberal shape of recent development policy has been subordinated, at least in my consciousness, to a much more aggressive and overt form of imperialism. ---
**Author:** ![Mandelstam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Mandelstam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mandelstam)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/115 "2003-03-30T23:12:04Z")
Oh, and I like Stiglitz’s book, for what it’s worth. But I’ll check out Steven Landsburg when my head is less brimming with war (and work). ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2003, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/116 "2003-03-31T00:02:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Apos \* > > I look to Steven Landsburg for my dose of “smart-ass economist iconoclast” these days. [hijack] Oh god , don’t get me started on Landsburg! I would tend to omit the “smart-” part out of your description. I just read an op-ed by him about a month ago in the Wall Street Journal and it was one of the more horrendous pieces of trash I have seen recently. It was basically a diatribe over Gephardt talking about “trickle up” economics in place of “trickle down” economics. As near as I could tell, the two major points of the piece were that (1) “Trickle up” doesn’t make sense because the only thing that opposes gravity in this way is “hot air” (admittedly said a bit lightheartedly but with enough of an underlying bite to raise the cackles of this physicist who doesn’t like to see hard science abused to argue social science points). (2) There exists a high school in Virginia that has a web site which demonstrates that the teachers there don’t understand supply-side economics and confuse it with demand side economics. Okay, you probably are thinking, “He couldn’t possibly get an op-ed published on these two silly points.” Well, that’s exactly what I thought … It was stupid even by WSJ editorial page standards! But it gets worse than that! Further investigation showed that it did live up to the usual WSJ editorial page standards for distortion and half-truths as it turned out that he quoted very selectively from that Virginia high schools’ web page. He made it sound as if they had defined supply-side economics as Keynesian demand-side economics when, in fact, they had mixed in both … Essentially, in one place they had correctly discussed how it works on the supply-side of the equation but then in another place, they had discussed it using both supply-side and demand-side ideas. Landsburg teaches here in Rochester at U of Rochester and I have since heard from a student there, who started taking a course with him and then dropped it, that he is not much less strongly and belligerently opinionated in class. I did go on the web and read some of Landsburg’s less political pieces like the one he wrote on how they were trying to figure out why many people will walk up stairs but won’t walk on escalators. He’s definitely a better read on such topics although I couldn’t help but conclude from his column that “Boy, these economists are stupider than I thought. It took them that long to figure this out!?!” Maybe he exagerated the amount of time that they spent thinking about this in order to make it a better story. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2003, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/117 "2003-03-31T00:07:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Apos \* > > I look to Steven Landsburg for my dose of “smart-ass economist iconoclast” these days. [hijack] Oh god , don’t get me started on Landsburg! I would tend to omit the “smart-” part out of your description. I just read an op-ed by him about a month ago in the Wall Street Journal and it was one of the more horrendous pieces of trash I have seen recently. It was basically a diatribe over Gephardt talking about “trickle up” economics in place of “trickle down” economics. As near as I could tell, the two major points of the piece were that (1) “Trickle up” doesn’t make sense because the only thing that opposes gravity in this way is “hot air” (admittedly said a bit lightheartedly but with enough of an underlying bite to raise the cackles of this physicist who doesn’t like to see hard science abused to argue social science points). (2) There exists a high school in Virginia that has a web site which demonstrates that the teachers there don’t understand supply-side economics and confuse it with demand side economics. Okay, you probably are thinking, “He couldn’t possibly get an op-ed published on these two silly points.” Well, that’s exactly what I thought … It was stupid even by WSJ editorial page standards! But it gets worse than that! Further investigation showed that it did live up to the usual WSJ editorial page standards for distortion and half-truths as it turned out that he quoted very selectively from that Virginia high schools’ web page. He made it sound as if they had defined supply-side economics as Keynesian demand-side economics when, in fact, they had mixed in both … Essentially, in one place they had correctly discussed how it works on the supply-side of the equation but then in another place, they had discussed it using both supply-side and demand-side ideas. Landsburg teaches here in Rochester at U of Rochester and I have since heard from a student there, who started taking a course with him and then dropped it, that he is not much less strongly and belligerently opinionated in class. I did go on the web and read some of Landsburg’s less political pieces like the one he wrote on how they were trying to figure out why many people will walk up stairs but won’t walk on escalators. He’s definitely a better read on such topics although I couldn’t help but conclude from his column that “Boy, these economists are stupider than I thought. It took them that long to figure this out!?!” Maybe he exagerated the amount of time that they spent thinking about this in order to make it a better story. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2003, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/118 "2003-03-31T00:13:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Apos \* > > I look to Steven Landsburg for my dose of “smart-ass economist iconoclast” these days. [hijack] Oh god , don’t get me started on Landsburg! I would tend to omit the “smart-” part out of your description. I just read an op-ed by him about a month ago in the Wall Street Journal and it was one of the more horrendous pieces of trash I have seen recently. It was basically a diatribe over Gephardt talking about “trickle up” economics in place of “trickle down” economics. As near as I could tell, the two major points of the piece were that (1) “Trickle up” doesn’t make sense because the only thing that opposes gravity in this way is “hot air” (admittedly said a bit lightheartedly but with enough of an underlying bite to raise the cackles of this physicist who doesn’t like to see hard science abused to argue social science points). (2) There exists a high school in Virginia that has a web site which demonstrates that the teachers there don’t understand supply-side economics and confuse it with demand side economics. Okay, you probably are thinking, “He couldn’t possibly get an op-ed published on these two silly points.” Well, that’s exactly what I thought … It was stupid even by WSJ editorial page standards! But it gets worse than that! Further investigation showed that it did live up to the usual WSJ editorial page standards for distortion and half-truths as it turned out that he quoted very selectively from that Virginia high schools’ web page. He made it sound as if they had defined supply-side economics as Keynesian demand-side economics when, in fact, they had mixed in both … Essentially, in one place they had correctly discussed how it works on the supply-side of the equation but then in another place, they had discussed it using both supply-side and demand-side ideas. Landsburg teaches here in Rochester at U of Rochester and I have since heard from a student there, who started taking a course with him and then dropped it, that he is not much less strongly and belligerently opinionated in class. I did go on the web and read some of Landsburg’s less political pieces like the one he wrote on how they were trying to figure out why many people will walk up stairs but won’t walk on escalators. He’s definitely a better read on such topics although I couldn’t help but conclude from his column that “Boy, these economists are stupider than I thought. It took them that long to figure this out!?!” Maybe he exagerated the amount of time that they spent thinking about this in order to make it a better story. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2003, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/119 "2003-03-31T00:18:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Apos \* > > I look to Steven Landsburg for my dose of “smart-ass economist iconoclast” these days. [hijack] Oh god , don’t get me started on Landsburg! I would tend to omit the “smart-” part out of your description. I just read an op-ed by him about a month ago in the Wall Street Journal and it was one of the more horrendous pieces of trash I have seen recently. It was basically a diatribe over Gephardt talking about “trickle up” economics in place of “trickle down” economics. As near as I could tell, the two major points of the piece were that (1) “Trickle up” doesn’t make sense because the only thing that opposes gravity in this way is “hot air” (admittedly said a bit lightheartedly but with enough of an underlying bite to raise the cackles of this physicist who doesn’t like to see hard science abused to argue social science points). (2) There exists a high school in Virginia that has a web site which demonstrates that the teachers there don’t understand supply-side economics and confuse it with demand side economics. Okay, you probably are thinking, “He couldn’t possibly get an op-ed published on these two silly points.” Well, that’s exactly what I thought … It was stupid even by WSJ editorial page standards! But it gets worse than that! Further investigation showed that it did live up to the usual WSJ editorial page standards for distortion and half-truths as it turned out that he quoted very selectively from that Virginia high schools’ web page. He made it sound as if they had defined supply-side economics as Keynesian demand-side economics when, in fact, they had mixed in both … Essentially, in one place they had correctly discussed how it works on the supply-side of the equation but then in another place, they had discussed it using both supply-side and demand-side ideas. Landsburg teaches here in Rochester at U of Rochester and I have since heard from a student there, who started taking a course with him and then dropped it, that he is not much less strongly and belligerently opinionated in class. I did go on the web and read some of Landsburg’s less political pieces like the one he wrote on how they were trying to figure out why many people will walk up stairs but won’t walk on escalators. He’s definitely a better read on such topics although I couldn’t help but conclude from his column that “Boy, these economists are stupider than I thought. It took them that long to figure this out!?!” Maybe he exagerated the amount of time that they spent thinking about this in order to make it a better story. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2003, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415/120 "2003-03-31T00:24:01Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mandelstam \* > \*\*Please explain why so far there is _not one single source for your wild allegations against the BBC that hasn’t been in some way financed by Rupert Murdoch_–who has a well-known economic interest in discrediting that public-financed competitor \*\* Hey, **Mandelstam** , my case is weak enough that you don’t need to add bogus weaknesses. 😉 Andrew Sullivan owns his own blog. The letter-writers in the Times were not owned by Murdoch; one of them had been a Labour Party minister. The BBC correspondant who complained isn’t financed by Murdoch. A separate question is why non-Murdoch media didn’t report on the position of the Labour minister or the BBC correspondant. Their POVs would seem to be newsworthy. This non-Murdoch [parody](http://www.iconoclast.ca/MainPage.asp?page=/NewPage10.asp) may be implying that the BBC is biased, but I’m not sure. Anyhow, it’s on point, and it’s funny. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-bbc-anti-war-spin-causing-more-casualties-than-necessary/164415.md?page=7)