Niall Ferguson’s Newsweek Cover Story About Obama Called Unethical

President Barack Obama appears on the most recent Newsweek cover, but the story challenges the idea that all press is good press. The story by columnist Niall Ferguson suggests that the economy can’t handle much more of the president’s policies, but at least one opponent says the whole story is based on bogus facts.

Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning Princeton economics professor, wrote a blog for the New York Times accusing the Newsweek cover story of being unethical.

“There are multiple errors and misrepresentations in Niall Ferguson’s cover story in Newsweek — I guess they don’t do fact-checking — but this is the one that jumped out at me,” Ferguson wrote.

He then cites a passage that implies President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, will cost the nation’s deficit $1.2 trillion.

He continued:

“Readers are no doubt meant to interpret this as saying that CBO found that the Act will increase the deficit. But anyone who actually read, or even skimmed, the CBO report knows that it found that the ACA would reduce, not increase, the deficit — because the insurance subsidies were fully paid for.”

Long story short, Krugman claims the Newsweek story is outright wrong, that Ferguson is simply misrepresenting the facts.

The Huffington Post reports that Ferguson and Krugman have been bashing each other in public for years. Ferguson, who is Harvard history professor in addition to his column writing, claims that Obama’s broken promises and inability to fix the economic crisis should cost him the election against Mitt Romney.

Ferguson responded to Krugman’s claims in a Newsweek blog post, saying the CBO report did acknowledge that the ACA will cost the government money and finished with a snarky reply.

“Thanks for trying, Paul,” Ferguson wrote.

The Newsweek cover in question is for the August 27 edition, on stands now.