The bar for scandal in the Trump administration keeps being raised. Every week brings potentially damaging developments that in other contexts could have generated weekslong controversies. With so many competing stories, however, they are frequently ignored or forgotten. As a result, even negative coverage can sometimes benefit President-elect Donald J. […] Read more »
Donald Trump has brought us the American style in paranoid politics
Political scientists long assumed that U.S. institutions were more open and sturdier than those in other countries. One manifestation of that robustness, the theory went, was that U.S. politics appeared largely free from troubling symptoms like conspiracy thinking. Foreigners — particularly in less-developed countries — might attribute the actions of […] Read more »
The Real Story About Fake News Is Partisanship
… Today, political parties are no longer just the people who are supposed to govern the way you want. They are a team to support, and a tribe to feel a part of. And the public’s view of politics is becoming more and more zero-sum: It’s about helping their team […] Read more »
The Media and Institutional Failure
The media is enduring a good deal of criticism lately, particularly with regards to its coverage of politics and elections. But what, exactly, is the media’s role in politics? Are we applying unrealistic expectations to an entire industry? CONT. Seth Masket (U. of Denver), Pacific Standard Read more »
Belief in conspiracies largely depends on political identity
Sometimes it seems that Americans will believe anything. And what we know as true or not true these days can depend on our political point of view. But there are many of us who are willing to give at least some credence to the possibility that a claim might be […] Read more »
Kaiser Health Policy News Index: 2016 in Review
… Although the election was certainly the biggest national story of 2016, there were several major health policy stories that made news this year, including the unsafe levels of lead in Flint, Michigan’s water supply and the Zika virus outbreak. The year was bookended by stories about Republican lawmakers and […] Read more »