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Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.
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 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?" ( ]Snipurl / Snurl / Snipr - Snippetty snip snip with your looong URLs! ): "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....
Excerpt:
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.
Yep, there are Democrats that see the problem with the media:
Meridian Magazine:: Ideas and Society: Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
Journalism sold out to sensationalism and the dollars it means long ago. High school was the best time in journalism. We still believed in the ideal of reproting only the truth. Reality comes later.
It really is amazing. I can remember sitting in class and looking at all the examples of biased reporting. Today it ALL looks like that. Yes--journalism has sold out. Possibly the biggest rip off of Americans in decades.
It really is amazing. I can remember sitting in class and looking at all the examples of biased reporting. Today it ALL looks like that. Yes--journalism has sold out. Possibly the biggest rip off of Americans in decades.
oh please stop this whining and bitching about how unfair and untruthful the media is. You only complain now because you feel it's against your side.
Having just watched a documentary on how the media played a crucial role in the "special investigations" into Bill Clinton's sex life I have zero sympathy for the righties who are now having to deal with the slanted media bias.
News stopped being news when they started taking talking points from people with an agenda to push and started reporting that as facts.
There is very little unbias news coverage, even on CNN and CSPAN. It's ridiculous but it's even more ridiculous to think that somehow NOW, it's so offensive and tainted.
it's been that way for quite a while. Its just temporarily swung in the other direction, for now. Get over it... you'll have your day in the sun again where the media will be sucking on the tit of the right and you'll be right back in your happy place again.
You missed I'll assume who the 'bitching' was from? Not a conservative...oh please stop this whining and bitching about how unfair and untruthful the media is. You only complain now because you feel it's against your side.
Having just watched a documentary on how the media played a crucial role in the "special investigations" into Bill Clinton's sex life I have zero sympathy for the righties who are now having to deal with the slanted media bias.
News stopped being news when they started taking talking points from people with an agenda to push and started reporting that as facts.
There is very little unbias news coverage, even on CNN and CSPAN. It's ridiculous but it's even more ridiculous to think that somehow NOW, it's so offensive and tainted.
it's been that way for quite a while. Its just temporarily swung in the other direction, for now. Get over it... you'll have your day in the sun again where the media will be sucking on the tit of the right and you'll be right back in your happy place again.
oh please stop this whining and bitching about how unfair and untruthful the media is. You only complain now because you feel it's against your side.
Having just watched a documentary on how the media played a crucial role in the "special investigations" into Bill Clinton's sex life I have zero sympathy for the righties who are now having to deal with the slanted media bias.
News stopped being news when they started taking talking points from people with an agenda to push and started reporting that as facts.
There is very little unbias news coverage, even on CNN and CSPAN. It's ridiculous but it's even more ridiculous to think that somehow NOW, it's so offensive and tainted.
it's been that way for quite a while. Its just temporarily swung in the other direction, for now. Get over it... you'll have your day in the sun again where the media will be sucking on the tit of the right and you'll be right back in your happy place again.
Get over it... you'll have your day in the sun again where the media will be sucking on the tit of the right and you'll be right back in your happy place again.
Journalists aren't interested in getting to the real story. They're interested in advancing the liberal agenda. I'm as sure of that as I am that I will owe taxes next April, my boss will be grouchy tomorrow and my little girl will want her bottle in the morning.
Journalism sold out to sensationalism and the dollars it means long ago. High school was the best time in journalism. We still believed in the ideal of reproting only the truth. Reality comes later.
