The 2008 U.S. presidential campaign will go down in history for having been covered by a press corps that finally abandoned all pretense at objectivity, balance and aggressive reporting on both sides of the partisan divide.
Here is what one veteran U.S. newsman, now retired, had to say about the state of our profession in a private e-mail:
This from a former Navy Seal, vice president of two major U.S. news organizations and an award-winning foreign correspondent.
All of this might not matter except for the fact that the world's most powerful nation, which has served as the "city on the hill" for the global community, is about to participate in an election in which its free press has willingly and repeatedly concealed critical information the American voters need to know.
There is one article out there this year that says the obvious about one of the biggest stories of the decade, one that is not being told by the Mainstream Media (MSM). It is must reading for any U.S. voter trying to find his/her way through the fog of dissemblance that passes for 21st century news reporting. Columnist Orson Scott Card has written "An open letter to the local daily paper almost every local daily paper in America" which first appeared in North Carolina's Rhinoceros Times. Excerpts follow:
Letter to America's editors: To tell the truth, you lied and should be fired
I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?": "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.
. . . . If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe and vote as if President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats including Barack Obama and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.
Full text
There you have it. Vote your conscience, and not just at the ballot box.
