Seriously. It's right here.

He writes:

I'm looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge "facts" that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

He even has a pretty good example:

on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches "apologizing for America," a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the "post-truth" stage.

As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: Should news reporters do the same?

I don't think Brisbane's trying to be cute here, though he might want to know that Krugman for a time was actually not allowed call a lie a lie: During the 2000 presidential election season, Krugman said the Times "barred him from using the word 'lying'" when writing about George W. Bush (Washington Post, 1/22/03).

Nonetheless, Brisbane even offers some language that a reporter might insert into a story about Romney's false assertion:

"The president has never used the word 'apologize' in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president’s words."

This would be an improvement over nothing, but it's still pretty tame--if Romney's making this up in order to generate a campaign rally applause line, is it really a "misleading interpretation" of Obama's actual words?

The fact that this question is even being asked tells you something pretty profound about the state of corporate media--at least when it comes to politics, that is.

I don't think sports reporters would be so baffled by the idea that facts matter. Let's say New York Knicks star forward Amar'e Stoudemire declared after a game that he was proud of scoring 40 points, and went on to brag that this was much better than the measly eight points that Boston Celtics forward Kevin Garnett scored, who sat much of the second half due to foul trouble.

Reporters who watched the game and looked at the box score would notice that Garnett wasn't in foul trouble, had actually scored 20 points, and that Stoudemire hadn't actually scored 40 points.

I suspect that his odd, wildly inaccurate boasting would find its way into the paper--and that a reporter wouldn't talk about how Stoudemire had "misleadingly interpreted" the box score.

Of course political arguments aren't always so clear-cut (though the Romney example is pretty straightforward). But it is very easy to imagine a kind of journalism that demands powerful figures document questionable assertions--and note when they are unable to do so.

Another non-problem, in Will's world, is student loan debt:

Political logic suggests that this year Obama will try to rekindle the love of young voters with some forgiveness of student debts. But one-third of students do not borrow to pay college tuition. The average debt for those who do borrow to attend a four-year public institution is $22,000, and the average difference between the per-year earnings of college graduates and those with only a high school diploma is . . . $22,000.

I guess one lesson is that 2/3 of college students should either get themselves full scholarships or wealthier parents. But in the event that this isn't possible, never fear--you'll make enough money in a hurry to pay off your debt.

The more important question might be how this level of debt has changed over time. According to this item from the Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics blog (8/15/11), "There was $550 billion in student debt outstanding in the second quarter, up 25 percent from $440 billion in the third quarter of 2008."

And as the Project on Student Debt reports, the average debt load doubled from 1996 to 2008:

The picture one gets from the poll is pretty dramatic:

The question that seemed most important to Maddow and Hayes was why Republican politicians aren't shifting their policies in response to this apparent surge in anti-corporate populism:

MADDOW: The national sentiment right now being expressed to pollsters is that the people at the top are getting way too much of the spoils of both our economy and our political system and I resent it, and I think that even if I'm a Republican.

HAYES: Majority of Republicans say that wealthy people--corporations and people with money--have too much power in this country, a majority of Republicans in the poll.

MADDOW: Are you seeing politicians behave in a way that reflects a desire to meet that concern?

HAYES: What's amazing to me is how unresponsive Republican state level officials are and how much they're responsive to all of their ideological priors, all of the interests that they promised fealty to before they got into office, and how little trimming of the sails they've done.

I mean, Rick Scott just seems to be perfectly happy to plow along at 25 percent, doing all these things that are wildly unpopular. And I think there's a different set of incentive structures on the right, partly because of the way the money works over there, partly because of the ideological cohesiveness of the base.

But what we have not seen largely are course corrections.

MADDOW: Yes.

Of course, MSNBC is likely to focus more on what Republicans are doing wrong, or not doing at all; that's their bread and butter. But setting up a political discussion along these lines presents some problems.

If you're wondering why Republican politicians haven't become more anti-corporate, what about the Democratic Party? Democrats in the poll are far more critical of corporate power than Republicans. Does their party seem politically responsive to this?

(Of course, the first question to ask is whether you really believe politicians are actually sensitive to public opinion at all--read about Thomas Ferguson's investment theory of politics for another take.)

The most important thing to know is that this new populism isn't new. ABC's been polling on this for a while (results are posted on PollingReport.com):

And FAIR took note of this in 1998 (press release, 6/1/98)  when we compared public opinion to a survey of elite media:

The general public is more critical of the concentration of corporate power in the United States than are journalists. When asked whether they felt "too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few large companies," 57 percent of the journalists agreed, while 43 percent felt they did not have too much power. The numbers were quite different, though, when the Times Mirror Center asked the same question of the general public in October 1995. A full 77 percent of the public felt that corporations had too much power, with only 18 percent feeling that they did not.

On the panel was conservative former GE CEO Jack Welch, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell. The left end of the spectrum must have been former Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr., best known for his time leading the center-right Democratic Leadership Council. Nowadays Ford is a TV pundit (the "liberal" who advises Democrats to move further right) and works as a managing director at Morgan Stanley--a move from his previous gig at Bank of America.

As for the actual debate, Welch praised Herman Cain's tax plan, called for more domestic oil drilling and complained about the White House's anti-business regulatory policies. Ford, as the TV liberal, pointed out that the administration thankfully did not pursue progressive policy goals like card check, and that the White House deserves credit for reining in some EPA regulation. Ford also included a slam of Occupy Wall Street:

We Democrats can't criticize Republicans for catering to the Tea Party and not say to our Democratic Party you got to look beyond Occupy and be willing to do what's in the best interest of the country.

Given his current job, this is not surprising--though NBC viewers may have wanted to know that the "liberal" in the debate has been working for several banks. Or maybe David Brooks was the liberal here...