Sunday, January 22, 2006
Dishonest Economic Fantasies Screwing Over Ordinary Citizens
David Siortia - Huffington Post
In my book Hostile Takeover that comes out this Spring, I make the point that if you want to really understand the political/media Establishment's bias on economic issues, you have to look at what dishonest, highly-questionable assumptions are regularly portrayed as concrete factual axioms. The biggest and most dangerous assumption that we can see from our current political/media Establishment - and that we can see in today's newspapers - is the one that basically says the so-called "free" market is the only way to address society's challenges (I put "free" in quotes because many supposedly "free" market policies like our current trade deals are chock full of highly restrictive protections for Big Money interests - these policies are not "free" market, they are corporate socialism). These assumptions also portray anyone who challenges this "free" market fundamentalism as out of the mainstream, even as polls show most Americans question that fundamentalism). We see these biased assumption everywhere, and they come not from a Republican or Democratic bias in the media, but from an overall economic bias from the entire Establishment.
Let's take a second and look at the New York Times coverage of economic "globalization," both present and past. We can use the Times not to single it out (these trends can be seen in most Establishment media/political communication outlets), but because the paper is arguably the most important news outlet in the world.
The first place to look at the Times is in the writing of the paper's most famous and revered columnist, Thomas Friedman, who is (incredibly) portrayed on chat shows as either an objective centrist, or even slightly left of center. Yet he is the man who recently urged America to basically eliminate or drastically cut Medicare and Social Security; the man who chastises other countries for having strong worker protections; the man whose entire book, The World is Flat, is one giant glossy justification for shipping U.S. jobs overseas and driving wages into the ground; the man who, thanks to his unflagging efforts to shill for corporate America's agenda, gets billed by elitist rag sheets like Fortune Magazine as "The Oracle of the Global Century." Thanks to the Times, Friedman has become so influential that politicians (including Democrats) regularly regurgitate his exact language when endorsing the outsourcing of U.S. jobs.
But the bias of its top columnist pales in comparison to the more troubling bias of the Times' "news" reporting - more troubling because it is billed as objective journalism. For instance, take a look at the disdainful tone with which the paper addresses the recent election of working class populists in Latin America. The paper labeled as "radical" one Latin American leader's proposal to reject corporate-written trade policies that have driven his country into sustained poverty.
Polls have consistently shown the public's growing opposition to America's current corporate-written trade policy. America's trade deficit continues to skyrocket, real wages continue to stagnate and higher paying jobs are shipped overseas - all aided and abetted by a corporate-written economic and trade policies that actually encourage these trends. Yet the Times states as fact that the Democratic Party - the party that desperately needs to start winning the very working-class constituencies decimated by these policies - has nothing to gain by articulating anything other than more "free" trade.
Similarly, polls show that on major economic issues like energy and health care, the public rejects free market fundamentalism, and wants the government to play a strong role regulating the market. Parts of the economy with strong market intervention by the government such as publicly-owned energy facilities and Medicare have managed to provide quality services to the general public, while helping stabilize the economy. Yet the Times states as fact that progressives are rightfully "reproached" for demanding anything other than free market fundamentalism, and offers not even a mention of all the factual data about wage, pension and health care cuts encouraged by neoliberal trade/economic policies that clearly call into question all the assumptions.
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David Siortia - Huffington Post
In my book Hostile Takeover that comes out this Spring, I make the point that if you want to really understand the political/media Establishment's bias on economic issues, you have to look at what dishonest, highly-questionable assumptions are regularly portrayed as concrete factual axioms. The biggest and most dangerous assumption that we can see from our current political/media Establishment - and that we can see in today's newspapers - is the one that basically says the so-called "free" market is the only way to address society's challenges (I put "free" in quotes because many supposedly "free" market policies like our current trade deals are chock full of highly restrictive protections for Big Money interests - these policies are not "free" market, they are corporate socialism). These assumptions also portray anyone who challenges this "free" market fundamentalism as out of the mainstream, even as polls show most Americans question that fundamentalism). We see these biased assumption everywhere, and they come not from a Republican or Democratic bias in the media, but from an overall economic bias from the entire Establishment.
Let's take a second and look at the New York Times coverage of economic "globalization," both present and past. We can use the Times not to single it out (these trends can be seen in most Establishment media/political communication outlets), but because the paper is arguably the most important news outlet in the world.
The first place to look at the Times is in the writing of the paper's most famous and revered columnist, Thomas Friedman, who is (incredibly) portrayed on chat shows as either an objective centrist, or even slightly left of center. Yet he is the man who recently urged America to basically eliminate or drastically cut Medicare and Social Security; the man who chastises other countries for having strong worker protections; the man whose entire book, The World is Flat, is one giant glossy justification for shipping U.S. jobs overseas and driving wages into the ground; the man who, thanks to his unflagging efforts to shill for corporate America's agenda, gets billed by elitist rag sheets like Fortune Magazine as "The Oracle of the Global Century." Thanks to the Times, Friedman has become so influential that politicians (including Democrats) regularly regurgitate his exact language when endorsing the outsourcing of U.S. jobs.
But the bias of its top columnist pales in comparison to the more troubling bias of the Times' "news" reporting - more troubling because it is billed as objective journalism. For instance, take a look at the disdainful tone with which the paper addresses the recent election of working class populists in Latin America. The paper labeled as "radical" one Latin American leader's proposal to reject corporate-written trade policies that have driven his country into sustained poverty.
Polls have consistently shown the public's growing opposition to America's current corporate-written trade policy. America's trade deficit continues to skyrocket, real wages continue to stagnate and higher paying jobs are shipped overseas - all aided and abetted by a corporate-written economic and trade policies that actually encourage these trends. Yet the Times states as fact that the Democratic Party - the party that desperately needs to start winning the very working-class constituencies decimated by these policies - has nothing to gain by articulating anything other than more "free" trade.
Similarly, polls show that on major economic issues like energy and health care, the public rejects free market fundamentalism, and wants the government to play a strong role regulating the market. Parts of the economy with strong market intervention by the government such as publicly-owned energy facilities and Medicare have managed to provide quality services to the general public, while helping stabilize the economy. Yet the Times states as fact that progressives are rightfully "reproached" for demanding anything other than free market fundamentalism, and offers not even a mention of all the factual data about wage, pension and health care cuts encouraged by neoliberal trade/economic policies that clearly call into question all the assumptions.
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