Krugman in Tussle with Producer of Dan Rather Show

By: E & P Staff Will Paul Krugman get an apology from Dan Rather's CBS producer, or absorb another blow?

On Friday, Jim Murphy, executive producer of CBS Evening News, denounced Krugman's column that morning in The New York Times and said the "entire staff" of the Rather program was "pretty miffed." Now Krugman has accused Murphy of having "misread what I said."

Krugman's column had hit the "trivialization" of TV news. Murphy, in a letter to the Romenesko site at poynter.org, claimed that Krugman had asserted that "not a SINGLE issues piece has aired on the big newscasts in the past two months." According to Murphy, "He must have missed the SIXTEEN different 'issues' pieces we did over a four week period during that time...With the resources of The New York Times you would think that would be kind of difficult to miss....

"How can anyone take an editorialist's arguments seriously when he ignores some FACTS completely?"

But Krugman, in a letter to E & P, begged to differ, charging Murphy with misreading his column. Krugman denied that he wrote that there had been no issue reporting over two months, only that "issue coverage is very thin, and that there has in particular been no clear explanation of even the most basic elements of the Kerry health care plan." He added: "That statement is, alas, true."

While he found a Rather report from June 29 the best of a thin lot on that issue, even that did not explain that the Kerry plan would "cover most of those now ininsured," nor that it would "be financed by a tax-cut rollback...the CBS report conveyed the false impression that the plan is unfounded pie in the sky."

Taking one more shot at Murphy, Krugman added that "a voter who gets his or her news from TV, even CBS with its 'issues' series, would have little or no idea of what Kerry is offering, or how it differs from Bush."