Interesting Links for 17-09-2012

[andrewducker]

• So, why is it ok to print pictures of Prince Harry naked, but not Kate Middleton?
  Also, I am amused that people still refer to her as Kate Middleton, on the grounds that nobody knows who "Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge" is.
  (tags: uk media privacy )
• Don’t Tell Anyone, but the US Stimulus Worked
  (tags: economics usa )
• Bad Children's Books -- Visual

Comments

So, why is it ok to print pictures of Prince Harry naked, but not Kate Middleton?

[cartesiandaemon]

I wonder what the guidelines should be? Currently it seems like we have an awkward double standard where things are tortuously defined as "in the public interest" or not, but everyone has an incentive to bend the law as far as possible in order to be able to print juicy pictures.

Should we accept that the pictures will be available online, and say that newspapers can write about a story, but have a stricter restriction on what can be published in "public" venues? That's somewhat unfair on newspapers, but might have the desired effect, in that "Prince Harry plays strip pool" is just about a human interest story, but "Telephotographer snaps the Duchess of Cambridge" isn't.

Re: So, why is it ok to print pictures of Prince Harry naked, but not Kate Middleton?

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure that either of them is strictly in the public interest.

Now, in one case you could argue that the person taking the photo had tacit permission (unless they did it secretly), while the other clearly didn't.

But neither case has any "news" justification other than "Naked Famous People! Wahey!"

Re: So, why is it ok to print pictures of Prince Harry naked, but not Kate Middleton?

[cartesiandaemon]

Oh, no, I think probably not[1]. What I mean is, I think it may be impractical or unwise or nonconstitutional to ban all non-public-interest stories. So I envisaged the newspaper could be at liberty to publish them even if they're not, but don't necessarily get to use the pictures.

[1] See digression in follow-up comment.

Re: So, why is it ok to print pictures of Prince Harry naked, but not Kate Middleton?

[fjm]

I don't think this even has to be dealt with as a story/public interest issue.

Stalking someone in the UK is a crime.For a UK newspaper to print the photos is to collaborate with a stalker. And it's the stalking that distinguishes the two incidents.

[ashfae]

In case you've never heard this, it's one of my favorites:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/loadingreadyrun/2516-Every-OS-Sucks

(I'd never seen this video for it; interesting)

[andrewducker]

Thanks forthat! I thought I'd heard it before too...

[philmophlegm]

"Don't tell anybody, but the US stimulus worked"
Fiscal policies work! Keynes was right!

"Tax cuts don't lead to economic growth"
Fiscal policies don't work! Keynes was wrong!

I love economics...

There's a longer comment waiting to be made here of correlation not equalling causation (yes, that old bugbear), ignoring monetary policy in both analyses, ignoring supply side effects in both analyses and the common American fault in articles like this of pretending that the American economy is not subject to global factors. But I can't be bothered...

[andrewducker]

Oh yes - any and all studies are open to bias, leaping on conclusions they like, ignoring the factors they aren't interested in, etc.

[del_c]

Where does Keynes say tax cuts lead to economic growth?

[philmophlegm]

Because tax cuts (everything else being equal) lead to a fiscal expansion (according to Keynes).

Quoting wikipedia (sorry I don't have my copy of the General Theory to hand...) "As noted, (during a recession) the classicals wanted to balance the government budget. To Keynes, this would exacerbate the underlying problem: following either the expansionary policy or the contractionary policy would raise saving (broadly defined) and thus lower the demand for both products and labour. For example, Keynesians would advise tax cuts instead."

This article explains more and also how Keynes is either misunderstood or deliberately used to justify policies that Keynes himself would have disapproved of:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/04/news/economy/meltzer_keynes.fortune/