Hard times at the Washington Post

[CHIMO]

The Washington Post is a newspaper with a proud legacy. It has done much important reporting over the years, most famously its coverage of the Watergate scandal that resulted in the resignation of Richard Nixon. Unfortunately, it seems to have abandoned its journalistic standards. In its last issue of the decade, it published as a news piece an article by the Peter Peterson Foundation-funded Fiscal Times. This compromised the Post's journalistic integrity to the extent that readers can no longer take it seriously.

Peter Peterson is a Wall Street billionaire and former Nixon administration cabinet member who has been trying to gut social security payments and Medicare for at least the last quarter of a century. He has written several books that warn of a demographic disaster when the baby boomers retire. These books often include nonsense arguments to make his case. For example, in one of the books making his pitch for cutting social security as matter of generational equity, Peterson proposes reducing the annual cost of living adjustment. Peterson justified this cut by arguing that the price index overstated the true rate of inflation, therefore the annual cost of living adjustment was overcompensating retirees.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/04/washington-post-fiscal-times-peterson

[Bobbieo]

1. I am a graduate of the 60/70s School of Journalism - the Walter Cronkite era

It sincerely pains me to see how far Journalism has deteriorated over the past few decades. What ever happened to "Objectivity" and the 5 W's when the reporters wrote/gave the news and kept an opinion to themselves.