Quitting this week is delving into hard news over health news.
Reporting has long been known as a "first rough draft of history." That elegant phrase was coined by the Washington Post's Phil Graham, who married into print but who thankfully treated it less as business and more as social imperative.
Social imperative was on the front page of the Sunday New York Times this morning in an article reported by Nelson D. Schwartz and Floyd Norris, two financial newsmen on the roster there. Although it was clearly flagged as news analysis, the piece accomplished what good reporting is at its heart; wake 'em up, shake 'em up.
The writers had advance copies of the United States Treasury white paper meant to curtail the spasms shaking our less than rock solid position in the global economic world. Bear Stearns, collateralized debt obligations, Countrywide shenanigans and the like.
The article notes that the proposals do "virtually nothing," give oversight a "light touch" and cement the neo-con commitment not to hamper the American markets with any kind of toothy regulation.
This interpretation stands in stark contrast to stories (not labeled analysis by the way) that lead with phrases like "creation of new regulatory agency" and "broad powers." These stories regurgitate the spin, shore up their own agenda of non-regulation or begin with names like Ann and end with Coulter.
By this Thursday morning, you will already have heard about the Bush government's attempts to right the ship, but unless you get (read: seek out) real news, you will have had a one-sided and diluted snippet of information, likely nestled between stories on a tasty spring recipe and the tale of another sad celebrity. One of the big network talking heads (the same networks that occupied the three channels available when we were kids) will mention it in passing, possibly with a furrowed brow at story's end.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will skewer it and aid us in tittering nervously while we digest dinner. But unless we read and make an effort to understand, our local, regional and national media will follow, rather than shape, the news.
It's an old refrain, but the media mavens have a vested interest in remaining mavens. No doubt Katie Couric really likes her apartment in the city. But here we are, regular Americans of all stripes, on our own killing fields five years later, with our civil liberties in tatters. The futures for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are uncertain, not because of execution but by dint of slow budget strangulation.
And to think, all we got was a picture of the president in codpiece on an aircraft carrier.
The piece in the Times, easily found by searching "Reluctant Eye Over Wall Street," also attains something far loftier; it is a historic call to economic arms. To paraphrase one of Portsmouth's very own teacher emeritus, the article merits rank as history-making because it reports the facts while paying homage to ideas that are socially useful and personally meaningful.
The writers point out that the regulatory umbrella created in the turbulent 1930s by F.D.R. would in fact grow bigger, with the trend being concentration of power in ever fewer agencies. Call it regulation lite as administered by mini-oligarchs.
Although observations such as these are easy to make, what to do about the state of our country is less clear. Vote, yes. But what else? It is unlikely that the single mothers in Baltimore or the elderly men outside of Chicago who are trying to restructure ballooning mortgages have time to hit the streets. It falls in part, or should, to the media to be the architects of agitation and stewards of American polity.
Recalling the 1970s kismet-like coming together of Deep Throat and plucky duo Woodward and Bernstein, can we dare hope for someone to step out of the shadows and ally with a member of the fourth estate sometime soon?
Modern history would do well to serve up a stew made of a smart reporter or two, a brave well-placed source, responsible editors and law to bring the ball home. Something, anything, to move these henchmen of the Carlyle Group on to greener pastures, say Antarctica, before our country is irrevocably dismantled for all but a few.
The $500,000 paid to the next of kin of each soldier killed in Afghanistan or Iraq seems to be one variable keeping folks quiet for now. But our lesson now needs to be regulation and oversight.
Michael Greenberger, law professor and former Clinton administration player, was quoted in the Times as saying the new regulatory policy is "equivalent to the builders of the Maginot Line giving lessons on defense."
It is worth exploring the details of this simile to drive home the underlying point. Get to work America.
Suzanne Danforth occasionally strays from health-related columns, but rest assured her battle against smoking continues. Write to suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.
