Duty to Warn

Now that the deadline has passed for hundreds of top corporate executives to certify the truthfulness of their financial books, we may expect more honest accounting in the future. But what if the heads of major firms were compelled to engage in other types of candor?

Let's imagine that the CEO of a leading media conglomerate felt the need to come clean about the firm's overall activities. The public statement might go something like this:

While revenues are down in our broadcasting division, we've done our best to wring every last dollar out of the airwaves that the parent company has been able to hijack from the public. Fortunately, these days, the FCC -- we call it the "Federal Complicity Cabal" around the office -- is giving us just about everything we demand.

In some urban areas, we now own at least half a dozen radio stations, plus a couple of TV outlets. And the restrictions against also owning local newspapers are on their way out, too.

WACO, Texas -- The President's Economic Forum held here Tuesday raises the question, "By how much don't they get it?"

The range of opinion at this shindig went from A to B. This wasn't a forum, it was a pep rally. Sis-Boom-Bah City for the old cheerleader. President George W. Bush said Baylor University "put on a good show." Got to agree. It was one of the most sophisticated phony political events I have ever witnessed.

Such attention to the details of stagecraft -- the lovely flag painting behind them at the plenary session, the helpful hints on the backdrops: "Corporate Responsibility," "Better Health Care," etc., for those too dumb to figure it out from the vapid speeches. The wonderfully artificial inclusion of "real people" -- all of whom just happen to think George W. Bush is divine. This Potemkin Village of diversity lacked just one thing -- anyone with a good idea. Any 10 ex-employees of Enron could come up with a long list of recommendations on how to fix things so this doesn't happen again. But they weren't invited.

To fend off the threat of peace, determination is necessary. Elected officials and high-level appointees must work effectively with reporters and pundits.

This is no time for the U.S. government to risk taking "yes" for an answer from Iraq. Guarding against the danger of peace, the Bush administration has moved the goal posts, quickly pounding them into the ground.

In early August, a State Department undersecretary swung a heavy mallet. "Let there be no mistake," said John Bolton. "While we also insist on the reintroduction of the weapons inspectors, our policy at the same time insists on regime change in Baghdad -- and that policy will not be altered, whether inspectors go in or not."

A sinister cloud briefly fell over the sunny skies for war. The U.S. Congress got a public invitation. A letter from a top Iraqi official "said congressional visitors and weapons experts of their choice could visit any site in Iraq alleged to be used for development of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons," USA Today reported.

With the "New Economy" now in shambles, it's easy for media outlets to disparage the illusions of the late 1990s -- years crammed with high-tech mania, fat stock options and euphoria on Wall Street. But we hear very little about the fact that much of the bubble was filled with hot air from hyperventilating journalists.

Traveling back on a time machine, we would see mainstream reporters and pundits routinely extolling the digitally enhanced nirvana of huge profits and much more to come. The "New Economy" media juggernaut was not to be denied.

Sure, journalists occasionally offered the common-sense observation that the boom would go bust someday. But it was a minor note in the media's orchestral tributes to the New Economy. And the bullish pronouncements included an awful lot of hyped bull.

AUSTIN, Texas -- You can already tell it's going to be a perfectly glorious political year in Texas. Four months out, and we've already got one gubernatorial candidate accusing the other of being a drug dealer, naturally causing the maligned party to in turn describe his opponent as a raving liar. This is going to be so much fun.

A grand old slugfest is developing in the race between Gov. Rick (Goodhair) Perry and his Democratic challenger, Tony Sanchez, and it shows all the signs of becoming a fall classic in Texas' toughest contact sport.

For starters, this is a backward, upside-down race. Normally we have Republican outsiders with no government experience running on their credentials as bidnessmen, a la in Bill Clements and George W. Bush, while claiming, "My opponent is nothing but a professional politician." This year we have a Republican incumbent we didn't vote for -- as Sanchez's ads keep reminding us -- who is a career politician being challenged by a Democratic businessman. But it could be a bad year to be a successful bidnessman, even in Texas.

Three and a half years ago, some key information about U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq briefly surfaced on the front pages= of American newspapers -- and promptly vanished. Now, with= righteous war drums beating loudly in Washington, let's reach deep down= into the news media's Orwellian memory hole and retrieve the story.

"U.S. Spied on Iraq Under U.N. Cover, Officials Now Say," a front-page New York Times headline announced on Jan. 7, 1999.= The article was unequivocal: "United States officials said today= that American spies had worked undercover on teams of United Nations arms inspectors ferreting out secret Iraqi weapons programs....= By being part of the team, the Americans gained a first-hand= knowledge of the investigation and a protected presence inside Baghdad."

A day later, a followup Times story pointed out: "Reports= that the United States used the United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq as cover for spying on Saddam Hussein are dimming any= chances that the inspection system will survive."

With huge financial scandals causing turmoil in the United States, this year has seen some vigorous reporting about high-level misdeeds and corporate manipulation. But many news stories just take the lead from top officials. In the months ahead, we'll find out how deep American media outlets are willing to go.

Big scandals always generate plenty of headlines and lots of excitement. Important information can emerge. But frequently, key facts remain buried and crucial questions go unasked. If it's true that reporters produce a first draft of history, they often serve as conformist "jiffy historians" who do little more than recycle the day's conventional wisdom.

A dozen years ago, when journalist Martin A. Lee and I were writing a book about media bias ("Unreliable Sources"), we tried to assess what had gone wrong with news coverage of the Iran-contra scandal. Along the way -- under the heading of "Signs of an Official Scandal" -- we listed some general characteristics of coverage routinely providing much more heat than light.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Now some fools want to fire Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, the only straight-shooter in the Cabinet. Tell you what I like about O'Neill: He's from Widget World. This Cabinet is wall-to-wall corporate America, but most of them -- including the president -- are from Enron Economics, whereas O'Neill was CEO of a business that makes something useful, to wit, aluminum.

As many economic poohbahs have been at pains to explain to us lately, out there in Widget World, where people produce actual goods and provide useful services, things are going along quite nicely.

It's the financial sector that's the disaster, the part where they play fancy games with other people's money for a living. That's Enron Economics, the land of stock options, commodities futures, derivatives, swaps, financializing markets and offshore partnerships.

Before we get back to our ongoing project of connecting the consarn, dag-rabbiting dots between corporate theft and government corruption, let's see if we can stop Congress from actually making things worse. Good project, eh?

AUSTIN, Texas -- OK, it's now hundreds of thousands of words past the WorldCom bankruptcy, with the media might of this great nation devoted to explaining it all to you, and there are still six words I cannot find anywhere -- the Telecommunications Deregulation Act of 1996. Don't you think that's carrying our famously ahistorical journalism a little too far?

When the cause of a disaster is a mere six years back in time, surely even American journalists can dredge up a twinge or two of memory. For those of you not afflicted by Alzheimer's in recent years, Bob McChesney, the media critic and professor at Southern Illinois, sums it up nicely: "The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was one of the most important of the last 50 years. It was also the most corrupt and undemocratic bill of the time: It was of, by and for special interests. Most of the congresspeople who voted for it didn't even know what they were voting on."

It was a Nuremburg moment. Fueled by the 911 "terrorist attack," Ohio State University graduates, their families, and friends were mostly in the same frame of mind as Germans after the burning of the Reichstag: they were all geeked up for simple-minded nationalistic jingoism which Resident George W. Bush supplied. The Selected One dotted the i on a big-ol' script Ohio so big that Osama bin Laden could read it.

I ran into Yoshie Furuhashi at Hempfest on the Saturday before the June 14 graduation/indoctrination to the New World Reich rally. As usual, she was in hyperactivism mode. I did manage to catch the following words: "wouldya like to be a alternativecommencementspeaker at the turnyourbackonbush rally, bring your soundsystem?" I agreed to Yoshie's request as I always do. After all, she's being honored at Community Festival this year for her energetic and consistent activism at OSU this past year.