Bad News is a collection of essays edited by our guest today, Anya Schiffrin. It features chapters by Ms. Schiffrin, as well as by Nobel Laureate Joe Stiglitz, Columbia Journalism Review’s Dean Starkman, HuffPo Business Editor Peter Goodman, and others in the field from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

The book examines the financial press’s version of the Veal Pen, or what Stiglitz calls “cognitive capture.” Just like the political reporters inside the Beltway have become slaves to access, Financial and economic journalists are just as dependent on their sources in industry and government for information and feel the need to keep those sources happy to avoid being cut off from the information flow that is the lifeblood of their production model.

Now consider how Keller equates O’Keefe’s serial fabrications with Julian Assange’s leaks–leaks the NYT has heavily relied upon in its own reporting.

You’ll not be surprised to learn that he men behind the Teabagger craziness and hysteria are in fact, crazy hysterics.

Complexity is blooming life. The Tea-GOP thinks we should destroy complexity in favor of simple stupidity.

As far as American political and economic life goes, this is the Era of Elmer Fudd. It’s a time when Elmer defeats the irreverent, freedom-loving Bugs Bunny, when the idiot Wile E. Coyote catches up to all those American roadrunners, from Johnny Appleseed to John Muir to Jack Kerouac and the eponymous Roadrunner himself.

It’s been three days since Japanese officials told us that three workers were exposed to potentially dangerous levels of irradiated water that had accumulated in the lower levels of the turbine/generator buildings connected to Unit 2 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Station.

I’m not inclined to believe the conservative argument that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac somehow caused the housing crisis by lending to poor people. I am inclined to believe that Fannie and Freddie are as responsible as the major banks for the abuse and fraud in mortgage servicing, in fact more so, because as a quasi-federal entity they had the ability to use regulatory means to put a stop to it. And now, we have pretty incontrovertible proof that Fannie Mae, at least, knew about mortgage servicing problems as far back as 2006.

The New York Times liberated the specific answer to a question that Russ Feingold asked in March 2009, but which the Department of Justice didn’t respond to until November 2010, when Feingold was a lame duck Senator. At issue were new investigative guidelines Attorney General Michael Mukasey issued in late 2008, on his way out the door, which allowed the FBI to investigate Americans for First Amendment reasons so long as that First Amendment reason was not the only reason they were being investigated.

“Wow. What suspense! Can Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates go on three straight shows and hide their disagreement over Libya? Can McCain, Gingrich and Lieberman be on the same Fox show without there being a core meltdown and massive release of radioactive gas? And can the nation’s unemployed, battered economy and common sense survive the combined demagoguery and stupidity of Holtz-Eaken and Rivlin? I can hardly wait . . . to go to a movie.” -Scarecrow

Gone Batty. This Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon was first released on September 4, 1954.