Dean Baker notices (Beat the Press, 11/02/08) “an obvious concern” completely missing from a long Washington Post piece in which “no one cited” thought that maybe “politicians at the [major upcoming economic] summit are too closely tied to the financial industry to promote regulations that will rein in abuses.” In fact, “while the paper had the opportunity to talk to many people who missed the crisis… its reporters could not find the time to talk to anyone who saw the crisis in coming.” The Post even found one interviewee who “expressed the concern that the meeting would result in too much regulation.” But Baker is far from shocked:
The Washington Post failed disastrously in its economic reporting over the last five years by almost completely excluding the voices of those who saw this financial crisis coming. As a result, Post readers would have been completely surprised by the crisis, unless they had access to better sources of economic information.
Baker’s best guess: “Apparently, its editors have either learned nothing from this failure, or alternatively, they do not care.”
Baker says the Post failed. Failing implies that you saw it as your job to do something, and didn’t succeed at it, doesn’t it?
The corpress doesn’t see it as their job to honestly report the facts. Indeed, doing so would be antithetical to their true mission, which is to make sure that the narrative of American politics never strays beyond the acceptable boundaries of the power structure.
And that system is deathly allergic to the truth. That’s why the Democrats would never blow the lid off the voter suppression schemes of the Republicans.
That would go beyond “policy differences”. That would expose the utter corruption and antipathy to true democracy that’s at the heart of the system.
And that cannot be allowed … whether the issue is political or economic power.
The game is played on this circumscribed field. If you don’t agree to play by the rules, you can go sit in the stands … ignored (if you’re lucky) by the refs.
That’s not paranoia, folks … that’s empiricism.
And yes … I suck at metaphors.