A couple of discoveries from Bill Moyers’ Journal

[mithriltabby]

I’ve been enjoying Bill Moyers’ Journal lately, and thought I’d share a couple of good discoveries I found there.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, of Annenberg Political Fact Check (factcheck.org), has showed up on the show a number of times, and I particularly liked the segment on political advertising. She’s a coauthor of unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation, which I found to be a very good discussion of the way politicians use spin, distortion, and outright lies in their campaigns. The book is targeted at the layman, not academics or politics junkies. Fans of factcheck.org should also check out PolitiFact.

The Debt Dilemma features an interview with Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson of Public Agenda. They spoke sufficiently well that I picked up a copy of their book, Where Does the Money Go?: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis, and found it to be a very lucid explanation of the ramifications of our national debt, deflating myths from both ends of the partisan spectrum. Interested folk may also want to visit Facing Up.

Comments

Maxed Out

[engelcox.livejournal.com]

There's a documentary called Maxed Out that compares our national debt to people's personal abuse of credit. Quite interesting.

[kawgirl.livejournal.com]

Factcheck.org is da bomb! I find that every election, NPR manages to remind us of this webpage and I always find it fascinating (sometimes not in a good way).

Thanks for pointing out Bill Moyers' Journal. I should check that out.