Entrevista com o Krugman

O buzzflash publicou uma entrevista bacana com o Paul Krugman. O professor e colunista do New York Times, explica que não faz parte do "clubinho" dos jornalistas, por isso fica de fora das últimas fofocas de Washington, mas isso é compensado pela maior independência de opinião.

Krugman tb critica o governismo de muitos colegas jornalistas americanos...

BUZZFLASH: You make the case that a revolutionary, right wing movement has set out to transform the United States, and they're succeeding. So much of the print media and so many television broadcast journalists have become more like stenographers for the official government spin than probing journalists. What's your take on that?

KRUGMAN: Well, a couple of things. The first is that a good part of the media are essentially part of the machine. If you work for any Murdoch publication or network, or if you work for the Rev. Moon's empire, you're really not a journalist in the way that we used to think. You're basically just part of a propaganda machine. And that's a pretty large segment of the media.

As for the rest, certainly being critical at the level I've been critical -– basically saying that these guys are lying, even if it's staring you in the face –- is a very unpleasant experience. You get a lot of heat from people who should be on your side, because they accuse you of being shrill, which is everybody's favorite word for me. And you become a personal target. It can be quite frightening. I've seen cases where a journalist starts to say something less than reverential about Bush, and then catches himself or herself, and says something like, "Oh, I better not say that, I'll get 'mailed.'" And what they mean by "mail" is hate mail, and it also means that somebody is going to try to see if there's anything in your personal history that can be used to smear you.

It's like shock therapy, aversion therapy. If you touch these things, you yourself are going to get an unpleasant, painful electric shock. And most people in the media just back off as a result.