> Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Wall Street Journal editorial page between 2000 and 2011, and someone in the same period who read only the collected columns of Paul Krugman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of the current economic crisis?
Using that hypothetical, you'd either think George W. Bush was the next coming of Jesus or Hitler. There was very little unbiased economic information in either opinion section. On his blog, Krugman is much less biased and inflammatory (perhaps because he doesn't feel the need to help sell newspapers there) and in this case, he brings up some valid points about the intentionally deflationary currency.
You're missing the point of the frumforum post. It was: if you were planning for the future, which source of predictions (the WSJ editorial page or Krugman's column) would have been a more accurate guide? It's about whether the horse would win, place, show, or be in the money at all - not whether the horse was pretty.
Biased or unbiased doesn't matter. The truth is biased. If the WSJ or Krugman says the passage of X bill will destroy Thailand's exports, and Thailand's exports rise, that's a failure. If the WSJ or Krugman say that Thailand is a beautiful country, that's irrelevant to the question.
I'm not going to do your research for you, I'm just saying that whether either demonised or praised Bush is irrelevant to the claim that was being made - unless you're making specific claims that Bush will verifiably exhibit the ability to possess a little girl, or to drive the demons out of a little girl into a herd of pigs.
Truth is biased; it will ignore every argument you make that contradicts what it knows to be true. 2 + 2 = 4 is irredeemably biased against 2 + 2 = 5. Disturbingly partisan.
The only claim made in the hypothetical question was that either op-ed page could be used to become "informed about the realities of the current economic crisis". I was criticizing that assumption, not whether one was a better source of information than the other.
Bias has to do with how we perceive the world. To say that data has a bias comes from a unique perception of fairness, not the data itself. To exclude relevant data to make a point, which these op-ed pages are notorious for, is a form of bias. More definitions here: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bias
> Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Wall Street Journal editorial page between 2000 and 2011, and someone in the same period who read only the collected columns of Paul Krugman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of the current economic crisis?
[1] http://www.frumforum.com/were-our-enemies-right