Media Elitism
Ezra flags an odd Meet the Press discussion, and remarks on what it says about the media:
It’s always worth noting that the “elitism” of the media is not a bias towards expertise, but a bias towards people they know. Which is how you get Meet the Press episodes on the economy that don’t include any credentialed economists. It’s weird, until you realize that they don’t really know many economists, so how are they supposed to invite any on the show?
I don’t think that’s quite right. I’ve bemoaned many time how the media, especially column writers, have no apparent use for experts, but that doesn’t really mean that journalists don’t know any of them. I mean Paul Krugman writes for the New York Times, I’m sure he’s in a lot of journalists’ rolodex. What’s really at work, I think, is that journalists don’t see why they need real economists on their Sunday morning panels. They think they understand things just fine and are perfectly qualified to give expert commentary on the matter, thank you very much. And that is much more dangerous.
At it’s highest levels economics is as much about faith as religion is with the mathematics used to support each particular “sect” as pliable as “indisputable” theological “proofs.”
At it’s base level economists are much like weathermen and have about the same accuracy level as weathermen and political pundits – they can tell you why something happened after it did, and maybe they can tell you how things MIGHT go beforehand.
Academics of all kinds are boring and economists are no exception…