Dean Baker on the Washington Post's Political Advocacy

I enjoy Dean Baker's blog Beat the Press where he acts as a watchdog on the media. In this post, he catches the Washington Post sneaking editorial opinion into a "news" article:

The Washington Post Tells Readers that the Financial Markets Are Wrong

The people who are betting trillions of dollars in financial markets have considerable confidence in the ability of the U.S. government to pays its debts, as demonstrated by the fact that the interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds remain extraordinarily low. However a front page Washington Post article told readers that these actors are mistaken, actually the United States is, "a nation already mired in red ink."

Most newspapers would restrict such sweeping and unsupported assertions to the editorial pages, however the Washington Post has made debt reduction a crusade. It has little concern for standard journalistic practices in pressing this agenda.

It is a tough enough job for the ordinary reader to absorb facts and understand issues well enough to fomulate an opinion. It doesn't help when the media drops its journalistic ethics and moves from "news reporting" to "editorializing" outside of the editoral pages.

I could accept this blurring of editorial opinion with honest reporting if all media did this. People could then look at the fact that media is owned by very wealthy people and recognize that these people have a political agenda and that they are using their media outlet as a political propaganda device. But the media in the US pretend to be objective (except for Fox "News" which is blatantly biased despite its claim of "fair and balanced").

Here is the "new face" of media in the US: