ERIC ALTERMAN. “Think Again: Perception, Reality, and Responsibility in the Gulf Oil Spill,” Center for American Progress, June 10, 2010.
"The president is in trouble. A New York Times “Week in Review” story, headlined “Obama and the Chaos Perception,” argued “the real danger for Mr. Obama’s administration—not that the spill itself remains unmanageable, but that it comes to represent a pattern in the public mind, a sense that too many dangers at once… what matters is the perception….” This is a common notion, and it’s just as common for a journalist from say, The New York Times, to pretend that newspapers like, say, The New York Times, do not play a significant role in defining those perceptions."