The Economist magazine reported on the successes of the Biden administration during the last year and the moderation of American voters in the 2022 election. The article said: It mustered a bipartisan majority to pass the chips and Science Act , a $280bn effort to shore up America’s microchips industry, thanks to growing wariness of China. After unsuccessfully pushing a grand economic redesign of America, the administration eventually compromised enough to overcome the resistance of Joe Manchin of West Virginia, often the swing Democrat in a 50-50 Senate, to pass a more modest, inaptly named Inflation Reduction Act , promising spending of $369bn over a decade. Its climate spending will be the most substantial in American history (in a year when disasters from drought in the West to Hurricane Ian in the East, to a nationwide winter storm at Christmas, served as a reminder of climate perils). Together with an infrastructure package passed in November 2021, the trio of bills w
George Will writes in the Washington Post that the decline of newspapers’ ad revenue has led to a big change in news reporting. People now read news in on-line papers and social media for validation of their views on the news, according to a book by Andrey Mir, “how the Media Polarized Us.” Will concludes by saying: Mir says that whereas journalism used to want its picture of the world to fit the world, “post-journalism wants the world to fit its picture.” This, he says, “is a definition of propaganda. Post-journalism has turned the media into the crowdfunded Ministries of Truth.” Although he paints with a broad brush and few pastels, there is an adjective that fits his depiction of today’s media world: newsworthy.