Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

[Amianthus]

By Orson Scott Card

October 5, 2008

An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:
 
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 benefitting
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 subprime 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.
 
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie.  Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
 
What?  It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
 
Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
 
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.
 
If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
 
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign -- because that campaign had sought his advice -- you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.
 
You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.
 
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
 
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
 
There are precedents.  Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension -- so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link.  (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
 
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
 
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth.  That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.
 
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie -- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans.  You have trained the American people to blame everything bad -- even bad weather -- on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
 
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth -- even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
 
Because that's what honorable people do.  Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences.  That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.
 
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one.  He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time -- and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.
 
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter -- while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.
 
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all?  Do you even know what honesty means?
 
Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?
 
You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women.  Who listens to NOW anymore?  We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.
 
That's where you are right now.
 
It's not too late.  You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.
 
If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.
 
Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.
 
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis.  You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
 
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
 
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 daily newspaper in our city.
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2008-10-05-1.html

[BT]

Then there is this:

Palin and CNN   [Byron York]


A bit more on CNN's "quote" from National Review in its story on Sarah Palin.  In the CNN interview with Palin, aired today, reporter Drew Griffin said to Palin:

GRIFFIN: Governor, you've been mocked in the press, the press has been pretty hard on you, the Democrats have been pretty hard on you, but also some conservatives have been pretty hard on you as well.  The National Review had a story saying that, you know, I can't tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt or all of the above.

PALIN: Who wrote that one?

GRIFFIN: That was in the National Review.  I don't have the author.

PALIN: I'd like to talk to that person.

GRIFFIN: But they were talking about the fact that your experience as governor is not getting out.  Do you feel trapped in this campaign, that your message is not getting out, and if so who do you blame?

Actually, no one wrote the "quote" that Griffin read to Palin.  But I began a recent magazine piece (unfortunately not available on the web, but hopefully coming soon) on Palin this way:

Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it's sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or ? or, well, all of the above. Palin, the governor of Alaska, has faced more criticism than any vice-presidential candidate since 1988, when Democrats and the press tore into Dan Quayle. In fact, Palin may have it even worse than Quayle, since she's taking flak not only from Democrats and the press but from some conservative opinion leaders as well.

After John McCain unexpectedly chose Palin as his running mate, reporters raced to Alaska to look into her family life, including her teenage daughter's pregnancy; into her per diem expense requests; into her controversial firing of the state's public-safety commissioner; into her husband's role as informal adviser; into the gifts she received; and into much more. Those investigations have yielded hundreds of stories. But Palin's time in the governor's office hasn't been all, or even mostly, family drama and minor controversy. She was also, lest we forget, the state's chief executive. So, what did she do every day? How deeply involved was she in the workings of government? What were her priorities?

And also: Before Palin moved into the governor's office, she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population 7,028. How did she adjust to a big new job? Was she up to it? What was her learning curve? Discovering how she made that transition could tell us how she might handle becoming vice president.

Yes, there are legitimate concerns about Palin's lack of experience. Who wouldn't, at the very least, wish that she had more time in the governor's office on her r?sum?? But a look at Palin's 20 months in power, along with interviews with people who worked with her, shows her to be a serious executive, a governor who picked important things to do and got them done ? and who didn't just stumble into an 80 percent job-approval rating.

So my question to Griffin, and perhaps to his producer, is: Do you think you accurately portrayed the story you cited in National Review?

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGY5ODU3N2VkNDY4OGIzYWYyYjVlYWFhZDViZmU2OWI=

[sirs]

GREAT article Ami.  Thanks for sharing it.

[sirs]

And I'll add this related article

[sirs]

The silence speaks volumes.............................ends justifies the means

[hnumpah]

And I'll add this related article

From a totally unbiased source, no doubt ...

[Michael Tee]

Attempts to pin the collapse of the economy on the Democrats, or in a  more sophisticated spin, on everyone "since there's enough blame to spread on both sides" are laughable.

First, the narrow focus on Fannie and Freddie, as if the roots of the crisis went no deeper or no further.

To believe that crap, you'd have to believe either
(a) that the lending restrictions were loosened under a Democratic President and Congress, but that from the time of the loosening and through almost eight years of a Republican Presidency, all but two with a Republican Congress, risky lending continued unabated, and most of the risky loans were being repaid on time until suddenly and without warning all or most of the risky loans suddenly went sour more or less at once and caused the crash; or
(b) that the loan restrictions were removed during a Republican administration and nobody in two full terms of a Republican administration all but two of which with a Republican Congressional majority could stop the evil Democrats from letting Fannie and Freddie run wild making crazy loans to irresponsible paupers.

You'd also have to believe that eight years of continuing declining trade balances under a Republican President had no effect on the dollar.

You'd also have to believe that a totally unjustifiable war of choice with a three trillion dollar price tag and currently running at a cost of $10 billion a MONTH, has no effect on the dollar and specifically on foreign and speculative confidence in it.

You'd also have to believe that the criminal irresponsibility of conducting such a war without raising taxes to pay for it has had no effect on the dollar and specifically on foreign and speculative confidence in it.

You'd also have to believe that the roots of the crisis go no broader and no deeper than the Fannie and Freddie lending practices, when in fact this crisis was brewing since the wave of S & L scandals, when McCain first made his mark as a member of the notorious Keating Five, through the more recent Republican scandals of Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, Adelphia, Worldcom, etc. scandals, all of which contribute to a weakening of confidence and a mistrust of the abilities of the system to regulate itself or be regulated.

Most absurd is the attempt to blame the extent of the current collapse on Fannie and Freddie because their toxic products allegedly found their way into the asset banks of such sterling monuments of probity as Merrill Lynch, Lehman Bros., Wachovia, IndyMac & Country Wide, Washington Mutual, etc.  Of course, this totally begs the question, if in fact the banking collapse was caused by banks overstocking on Fannie and Freddie products, who in the world was forcing them at gunpoint to acquire such dreck in the first place?  Why was there no oversight on what the banks could acquire as assets?  And how could companies which had either taken in such assets either as collateral or inventory, or been financed by institutions which had, get away with paying lavish compensation in the hundreds of millions of dollars to executives and officers who had basically hollowed out the real assets of their corporations and left it propped up from the inside with what were in effect bags of shit?

ALL of which shenanigans occurred during the course of two Bush administrations, six years of a Republican-controlled Congress and two with a razor-thin Democratic majority Congress under a Republican President.

Weak leadership from the top down has caused this crisis.  REPUBLICANS are the cause of the crisis.  Republicans like John McCain, who's been in Congress continuously since the Reagan administration.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The silence speaks volumes.............................ends justifies the means

Another volume for the 'sirs massive compendium of spoken silence'

Sometimes the end justifies the means, sometimes it does not. It depends on what the ends and the means are.

To wit:

It is wrong to lie, but to answer the question "Does this dress make my butt look big?" in the negative would be insane.
The dress will occupy closet space and go unworn, and you will have to buy another dress, plus she will hate you for suggesting that anything makes her butt look too large.

If Obama believes that Wall Street will continue to plummet, he should not declare this, because it will be a cause of further plummeting, and he will be blamed for it. The same question and answer would apply to McCain and even Bob Barr, if in fact, anyone actually is paying attention to the obscure Barr.

[Amianthus]

It is wrong to lie, but to answer the question "Does this dress make my butt look big?" in the negative would be insane.
The dress will occupy closet space and go unworn, and you will have to buy another dress, plus she will hate you for suggesting that anything makes her butt look too large.

I think you meant "in the positive" at the beginning.

Regardless, you do not need to lie - you can tell the truth and be polite about it. Say something like "the designer cut that dress so that it doesn't look good on your figure - let's go look at those dresses over there..."

The ends never justify the means.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The ends never justify the means.


Bah!

In the scene in question, we were referring to a dress that has already been bought and paid for.

The best way to avoid problems is to never go clothes shopping with any woman.

[Amianthus]

In the scene in question, we were referring to a dress that has already been bought and paid for.

Clothes can be returned.

[Xavier_Onassis]

In the scene in question, we were referring to a dress that has already been bought and paid for.

Clothes can be returned.

==============================
Sometimes. The more you pay, the more likely you will have that option, with the exception of designer tailored to fit clothes, I suppose.
If a dress was bought six months ago and you have no receipt, you are generally screwed.

There is no way that I am not going to tell white lies, sorry. I continue to maintain that the ends justifies the means, depending in the ends and the means in question.

I suppose it is comfortable for some people to think of all answers as black or white, always right or always wrong, but I see most issues as a shade of gray.   

[sirs]

And I'll add this related article

From a totally unbiased source, no doubt ...

and thus you can completely refute it......right?

[Amianthus]

I suppose it is comfortable for some people to think of all answers as black or white, always right or always wrong, but I see most issues as a shade of gray.   

I do not see the world as black and white, yet I can tell the difference between intentionally misleading someone, saying something the you believe to be true but is not, and telling someone the truth.

After all, if you don't tell her that that dress makes her butt look big (in a polite way, of course) then she will go out and buy more of them. And later on, when someone DOES tell her that it makes her butt look big, she will be mad at you for having lied to her.

[Xavier_Onassis]

This has never happened.

Some people actually appreciate larger butts, within reason, of course.

There are better ways of judging any issue than this ends and means nonsense.