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Why Anti-Cassandras Get the Media Attention
Paul Krugman today bemoans the fact that on the housing crisis and especially on Iraq the people who get the most media attention are those who got it wrong.
It’s even worse, of course, on the matter of Iraq: just about every one of the panels convened to discuss the lessons of five disastrous years consisted solely of men and women who cheered the idiocy on.
(Brad DeLong, Dean Baker and others have made similar complaints.) I think the fact is correct so what is going on?
The answer is media incentives. It wasn't just the experts who were wrong, the majority of the American people got Iraq and housing wrong. The war was popular in the beginning and people continued to buy houses even as prices rose ever higher. So what does the American public want to hear now?
The public wants to hear why they weren't idiots. And who better to explain to the public why they weren't idiots than experts who also got it wrong?
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on March 25, 2008 at 02:07 PM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
The majority of the American people usually gets things of this magnitude wrong due to asymmetry of information peddled by the groupthink of greedy Wall Street or foreign policy (read, military-industrial complex) lemmings.
Posted by: ideogenetic at Mar 25, 2008 2:17:30 PM
You obviously missed McCain's speech on the economic crisis this morning. He described all the instruments that made this happen, and then proposed that government backed loans require substantial equity because all the brokers are shady. It was the worst kind of patrician Republican speech imaginable, coming within 2 inches of blaming the Jews, and reserving home ownership for people who have $100K or more burning a hole in their pocket. And his 0% financing idea for the mortgage industry? Comparing to GM's offer in 2001 to move its cars in a sluggish economy... Who is this guy's crack dealer? People wanna hear this?
Posted by: Brad Hutchings at Mar 25, 2008 2:18:27 PM
http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif
Posted by: at Mar 25, 2008 2:20:14 PM
A very significant portion of the US public opposed the war at the start.
Posted by: richard at Mar 25, 2008 2:20:19 PM
Richard is right. Here is a story with opinion polls from 2002:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/24/opinion/polls/main523130.shtml
Posted by: Lemmy Caution at Mar 25, 2008 2:33:22 PM
Richard is right. Here is a story with opinion polls from 2002:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/24/opinion/polls/main523130.shtml
Posted by: Lemmy Caution at Mar 25, 2008 2:33:45 PM
Reporters depend on sources that can give them a quick and dirty sound bite.
Once they have found a cadre of people that can do that those are the people that they are going to continue to call on, They have little incentive to change their sources.
What we need is something to change the reporters incentive to call different sources. That has to be something that will discredit the old sources and that has not happened.
Posted by: spencer at Mar 25, 2008 3:04:27 PM
As the war began public opinion was strongly in favor. Look at the entire history at this Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_popular_opinion_on_invasion_of_Iraq
note in particular:
March 2003
An ABC News/Washington Post poll taken after the beginning of the war showed a 62% support for the war, lower than the 79% in favor at the beginning of the Persian Gulf War. [1]
April 2003
A poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News found that 72% of Americans supported the Iraq War, despite finding no evidence of chemical or biological weapons.[citation needed]
A poll made by CBS found that 60% of Americans said the Iraq War was worth the blood and cost even if no WMD are ever found.[citation needed]
May 2003
A Gallup poll made on behalf of CNN and the newspaper USA Today concluded that 79% of Americans thought the Iraq War was justified, with or without conclusive evidence of illegal weapons. 19% thought weapons were needed to justify the war.
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at Mar 25, 2008 3:05:05 PM
It's amazing how many people now claim that they opposed the war from the
start. It's like all the people who swear they stuck around to see
Hendrix at Woodstock.
Posted by: mike at Mar 25, 2008 3:09:47 PM
Great post. Much of this is equally applicable to the current Anti-Cassandras promoting anthropogenic global warming. Time will soon inform us as to how wrong they all are.
Someone in the not too distant future might well write:
It’s even worse, of course, on the matter of anthropogenic global warming: just about every one of the panels convened to discuss the lessons of five disastrous years consisted solely of men and women who cheered the idiocy on.
I revel in the future irony.
Posted by: Varangy at Mar 25, 2008 3:10:02 PM
The media also needs stories. "X changed his mind" maybe counts as a story, but "X didn't change his mind" surely doesn't. You may recall a few weeks ago I linked to a story about Ron Bailey changing his mind on global warming.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Mar 25, 2008 3:18:47 PM
Few people have the stomach for war. When it's a nebulous idea, people support it without much thought. When the enemy are dying and surrendering and being captured every day, we cheer and continue to support it. And then, eventually, we hit a point of diminishing returns where we're making very little tangible "yay America" progress.
Meanwhile, American soldiers continue to die, because they're still working their asses off over there. And every time an American dies, a little support drains away. In the early stages, we had victories and progress and enemy casualties to restore that support. Now we don't.
So in the final stages, nobody likes the war. The reason everyone "got it wrong" is that they supported the FIRST half of the war without understanding that this involved supporting the LAST half of the war, too. The people who have it wrong are the ones claiming we got it wrong in the beginning. We were right to support the first half of the war, and all we're doing now is paying the bill on it.
Think of Saddam Hussein's removal from power like a shiny new sports car; you have to make a big down payment, and then you have to keep making your payments. Almost everyone starts whining about that long before the car's actually paid off, but that's not because they "got it wrong". It's because they didn't think about the long term repercussions of their actions.
Those of us who DID think about the long term repercussions of the Iraq war not only supported it, we continue to support it - not because we like the war, but because we like what's at the other end of the tunnel. It's just that the way we get there is to crawl through miles of sludge and muck and garbage, and the excitement goes out of that pretty quick. Discipline is continuing to crawl no matter how much you've grown to hate it.
Posted by: Caliban Darklock at Mar 25, 2008 3:20:27 PM
TC, you've got to be kidding. The public supported the war not because they had come to the conclusion on their own that it was good idea but because public officials who they trusted said it was a good idea. Do you think that if Bush had been against the war, there would have been a grassroots movement against him to start one?
Posted by: at Mar 25, 2008 3:54:21 PM
Personal feelings aside, I have a couple of problems with this hypothesis. First, it overstates the support for the war. Go to Gallup's poll history. You have to search for '2002' on the page to get to the correct poll, which shows support hovering between 52 and 65. Your standard of 'popular' can be different of course, but I'd have trouble calling something with an average level of support of 57ish 'popular'. Second, the hypothesis doesn't explain why the composition of the panels isn't more proportional. Even if you take a generous level of support for the war -- say 70%, then why wouldn't there be 30% representation for the people who opposed the war and also want to hear their opinions aired? There doesn't seem to be any obvious winner-take-all mechanism at work.
My theory is that while something like 45% of the US population opposed the war, something like 10% of the national media opposed it (at least publicly). So the current panel distribution is reflective of the feelings of the people who organize the panels, not their audience.
Posted by: sidereal at Mar 25, 2008 4:03:02 PM
How about firing the "experts" who got it wrong and replacing them with the real experts who got it right?
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Mar 25, 2008 4:12:10 PM
One confusing factor was that (as I was hearing in audio clips last night) President Bush was asking for force "as the last alternative" and "if Saddam fails to disarm."
How does a citizen make clear that while he opposes wars, a little saber rattling is ok?
(As I said in a past thread, I wrote the President opposing the war, but I was not actually opposed to the stagecraft. In the final days IIRC we got further concessions and more UN inspections. It is just tragic that the President couldn't quietly take THAT as his victory.)
Posted by: odograph at Mar 25, 2008 4:13:45 PM
Caliban,
Actually, the support has stopped draining and may be increasing. After all, the new pitch is that
the surge is "working." John McCain and Bush and Petraeus say so, although the latter is a bit more
cautious about exactly what he says. We are working toward that end point of the tunnel you mention.
BTW, just what is that endpoint? The ending of al Qaeda in Iraq that did not exist before we invaded?
A cessation of bombing of the Green Zone? A national oil law that finally allows US oil companies to
cut deals there? (still has not happened yet) An increase in oil production beyond the Saddam period
levels that would bring down the global price of oil (production has mostly been well below those
levels since 2003, while the global price of oil has shot through the roof) Democracy spreading
throughout the Middle East, thereby saving Israel? (of course the Palestinians in Gaza had an election,
and the radically anti-Israeli Hamas won) Freedom of religion for minorities? (half the Christian
population of Iraq has fled the country since 2003). Iraq actually paying the trillion dollar cost of
the war out of gratitude to us as Paul Wolfowitz said would happen? (It was going to cost nothing,
if I remember) How about the walls between the freshly ethnically cleansed neighborhoods of Baghdad
will come down and there will actually be water, power, and functioning sewer sytems? And, oh yes,
there is my favorite: Iran will stand as the supreme power in the Persian Gulf, supported by its
friendly government in Iraq, put in power by us?
Just which of these is the end of tunnel vision you are deluding yourself with, please?
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Mar 25, 2008 4:36:21 PM
"It’s even worse, of course, on the matter of Iraq: just about every one of the panels convened to discuss the lessons of five disastrous years consisted solely of men and women who cheered the idiocy on."
Including Krugman's candidate, Hillary.
Posted by: Larry Cebula at Mar 25, 2008 4:44:51 PM
Krugman gets so many economics things wrong... I guess that's why he still has a job.
Posted by: Michael G.R. at Mar 25, 2008 5:06:47 PM
sidreal: Yes. I think the combination of 9/11 and the anthrax attacks was much more threatening to the folks at the top, as a class, than to the rest of us. This wasn't some disposable kid from Missouri who went into the Army and got shot, this was *us* who got blown up. (For some value of "us.") And the national consensus among media and political power types was enormous for us to go take some Strong Actions to Fight Evil.
One of the nicest results of this is that we've had a bunch of lessons on how little the media-driven perception of reality has to do with actual reality. With any luck, this lesson will stick around in many peoples' minds for the next few years. The consensus of the media amounts to consensus among a surprisingly small and uniform group of people, and it's not much indication of what's really true.
odograph: I think political feedback is not capable of that much subtlety, which is one reason why the biggest visible positions on most hot political issues is very black and white. Are you pro-war or anti-war. Are you pro-abortion or anti-abortion. Are you pro-free-trade or anti-free-trade. Are you pro-immigration or anti-immigration. Etc.
Now, most people appear to me to have rather subtle personal feelings/positions on those issues. But the political movements that work are almost always very black and white, demonize the other side and rally the troops sort of operations.
At best, we can maybe manage to convey to our political leaders a vague direction in which we'd like policy to move; we very seldom manage to get any subtlety into that message. "End war now!" is a silly message, but it's surely more effective than "Maybe we should reconsider the balance of our deterrent forces in Europe and Asia in light of our increasing need for money to cover domestic retirees, and the shifting role of the US in the post-cold-war world" is not.
Posted by: albatross at Mar 25, 2008 5:07:26 PM
Did Krugman only start reading the financial press when the real estate and mortgage bubbles burst? For every bearish commentator in bull markets as far back as you can go, there have been a score of bullish commentators.
Mutual fund manager Ron Mullenkamp was the most bullish tout in the run up in home building stocks after 1999, and remained bullish on them even past their peak in August 2005. His mantra was, "if people bring me fresh money, I buy the home builders." The last I remember reading this was in late 2006 or early 2007.
The ratio of bullish to bearish commentators in the media during bull markets has little to do with media incentives and more to do with "extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds."
Bearish commentators only come to the fore during bear markets, when bullish ones fade into the woodwork.
That Krugman appears shocked by this speaks more to his weird worldview than to anything else.
Btw, I'd like to see a list of his investments, mutual funds, etc. during the real estate runup. Betcha he owned some of these things after they peaked.
I had an e-mail exchange with Mullenkamp in the summer of 2005, in which I expressed my skepticism of the home builders after he or someone close to him was quoted in the press saying they could get to a p/e of 15. He said they were still a good buy. They were--right up until August.
Posted by: Bill Stepp at Mar 25, 2008 5:12:11 PM
Cabilan,
My congratulations to you to have the guts the say you support the war. I believe a public statement of support for the war effort is one of the most courageous things a person can do in America today.
I also was in support of the war in the beginning and I am now. I think it is unfortunate that so many people thought it was all about WMD. As with most issues of national security and national welfare, many of the real reasons for the action cannot be stated publicly, nor should they be. Fiat reasons often have to be used. Add to that the fact that President Bush isn't the best communicator. So the public largely follows whatever the media tells them to believe. Which, of course, now means they believe the war effort is a failure and shouldn't have ever happened.
We don't have an "alternate world time machine" to crawl into to find out what would have happened if we had taken a different course. With issues like this, we will never truly know what the final result of the effort will be--there are too many other circumstances that play in. If the result is the free flow of oil at market prices, we'll probably never know that Operation Iraqi Freedom was what caused it. (A certain group will go on believing it was because oil demand decreased because they bought their Prius and watched "An Inconvenient Truth".) If the result is a democratic, capitalistic Islamic state that demonstrates to the future Islamic world that prosperity isn't just a western thing, we'll probably never know that this was the reason. These things take a long time to develop, and many other factors play out in the meantime.
So, in considering the validity of the war effort, we have an upside that will never be conclusively proven, and a legitimate possibility that when all is played out it didn't go as we had hoped. Yet the possible downside for not acting--both in terms of international terrorism and also in world economics and political stability--were (and are) huge. NONE OF US know all the information that went into the decision (unless Presidential cabinet members or Armed Forces Committee members are reading this.) So none of us are really in a position to judge that it was right or wrong--certainly not to call people who supported the war "idiots".
Personally, I believe it was something that probably had to be done--if not in Iraq, perhaps somewhere else. I support the war effort. Our troops are doing a great job, and are accomplishing a lot more than most people realize.
Posted by: Daniel P. C. at Mar 25, 2008 5:45:37 PM
I believe a public statement of support for the war effort is one of the most courageous things a person can do in America today.
Far more courageous to cheer from home than to actually serve in the military.
If the result is the free flow of oil at market prices, we'll probably never know that Operation Iraqi Freedom was what caused it.
The results are in: the price of oil went up as the supply from Iraq decreased.
The best piece on the completely backward incentives pundits have on getting the Iraq war right is this from Radar.
Posted by: TGGP at Mar 25, 2008 5:54:38 PM
Housing: did MOST PEOPLE buy a house during this period? Did MOST PEOPLE get a stupid subprime adjustable mortgage during this period?
I think not. Most people didn't get housing wrong because most people didn't make a transaction during this period. Most people just sat. The optimum thing to do would be to sell your house and then rent, but "just sat" is the next best thing.
The situation is different with Iraq. Even if you didn't serve in the military, you voted (or could have voted) for or against the perpetrator.
Posted by: zbicyclist at Mar 25, 2008 5:57:34 PM
Does Krugman really want to hear from Pat Buchanan?
Posted by: 8 at Mar 25, 2008 6:02:49 PM
