Some Nuanced Perspective on The "Failing" New York Times/Fake News Phenomena

It is easy for intellectuals completely to dismiss certain absurdities spouted from on high but most actually have some basis and it is better to listen and understand why people hold the views they do rather than to dismiss them out of hand.

For example, back during the debates over the Affordable Health Care Act (aka Obamacare), people worried about "death panels." It seemed bizarre but was rooted in a profound insight: one should not have a life annuity (like Social Security retirement) and health insurance (like Medicare) through the same insurer (Uncle Sam) because of the incentive problem -- the annuity provider wants you to die so it can stop paying you.

Fake news is similarly rooted in a profound insight: the New York Times, WaPo, and so forth are written by and for members of the Eastern Establishment. One example of this appeared recently in the guise of a story about a play that critiques the now famous Hamilton musical. The reporter goes for comment to Eric Foner of Columbia, an esteemed doyen for sure but not an economic historian, and comes away with a quotation about the effect of slavery on the economy that most economic historians would have questioned or rejected. Like me, for example. I also critiqued Hamilton via a short rap song and alternative scene. Did the NYT reporter contact me? Of course not! I went to the University of Buffalo for my Ph.D. and teach in South Dakota. How could I know anything? I've only published like 18 books versus Foner's 22. It matters not that I'm 25 years younger than he is, and that he has never really studied the economics of slavery, he is right there at Columbia, where he also took his Ph.D. so he automatically knows more about the economic effects of slavery than I do, or any other economic historian (is that a thing?). My Poverty of Slavery can be safely ignored because the NYT Review of books did not review it, so it does not, in effect, exist. Except it does, and people who live outside of "the bubble" know it, and that it shows that slavery has never anywhere induced economic growth, it just enriches enslavers. But don't take my word for it. So the story, reporter, editor, and paper come across as perpetrators of news that is obviously incomplete and misleading. (Fake of course goes too far.)