WaPo, how low can you go?

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



The Washington Post Lets Pete Peterson Write The News On The Deficit
By Roger Hickey

January 1, 2010 - 7:13pm ET



On the last day of 2009, The Washington Post published an article, presented as a news story, which could be a signal of the death of the Post as an independent and objective news source.

The piece, entitled "Support grows for tackling nation's debt," appeared to be one of those background news pieces common in newspapers like the Post. But article was written not by the newspaper’s reporters – and not by an objective wire service, like the Associated Press – but by a new organization called The Fiscal Times, whose founder and major backer, Peter G. Peterson, has a long-term ideological commitment to convincing Americans that “support is growing for tackling the nation’s debt.”

These are indeed hard times for journalism, but The Washington Post is sealing its own fate as a fake news source if, as the press release for the Fiscal Times claims, this new “independent” digital news publication reporting on fiscal, budgetary, health-care and international economics issues has forged its first media partnership, a content-sharing agreement with The Washington Post. This deal, the first evidence of which is Thursday’s article, would be the equivalent of the Post reviving its old relationship with United Press International to cover religion and politics – without informing their readership that since 2000 the once-proud UPI has been owned by News World Communications, a media company owned by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church! The only difference is that Peter G. Peterson is starting his own news service instead of buying an old one.

Economist and media critic Dean Baker was the first to blow the whistle in his Beat the Press blog at The American Prospect website:

The piece (by Fiscal Times and published by the Post) conveys Peterson's view that there is a drastic budget crisis which requires circumventing normal congressional procedures. It implies that the huge surge in deficit in the last year was attributable to the irresponsibility of Congress rather than an economic collapse that resulted from incredibly incompetent policy and Wall Street greed.

The amazing thing is that, given the desire of the new Fiscal Times (and presumably the Post) to present their new partnership as an objective and journalistic endeavor, the actual article is so obviously slanted to the conservative point of view Peter G. Peterson (partner in Wall Street’s Blackstone Group and former Republican Treasury Secretary) has used his millions to promote over many years. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010015301/washington-post-lets-pete-peterson-write-news-deficit

[alstephenson]

1. K & R

[Blue Owl]

2. Don't encourage them!

On the Murdoch scale they're about a 9.7 in terms of lowness.