Reporting Facts and Not Opinions

Here is yet another post by Dean Baker in his Beat the Press blog where he takes the Washington Post to task for mis-reporting:

WAPO Should Make Clear, Constraints on Monetary and Fiscal Policy Are Political

A front page Washington Post piece was headlined, "Geithner, Bernanke Have Little in Arsenal to Fight New Crisis." This piece should have made it clear to readers that the obstacles to additional action are political not economic. All the obstacles noted in the piece are political in nature. The one possible exception is the S&P downgrade of U.S. government debt, which does not appear to be an obstacle at all. The markets laughed off this downgrade, sending U.S. bond prices soaring on the first trading day after the announcement.

A better headline for this piece would have been, "Political Obstacles Obstruct Response to Economic Crisis."

It feels like the US has a "Ministry of the Truth" sponsored by a Orwellian 1984 plot to confuse and misdirect the American people. Year after year Baker points out these "mistakes" by organizations like the Washington Post, but nothing changes. The people in charge of big media empires are not stupid. So they must be willingly spreading these lies and deceits. But for whose benefit?