Some Lies Are More Equal Than Others

Another tempest in a tiny, tiny teacup. In the past 18 hours (it's 4 pm on the East Coast), a fake Bill Keller op-ed has made the rounds. Within a few hours it was exposed as fake. The real giveaway was that it was better than any actual Bill Keller writing. The first I heard of the Bill Keller op-ed was as a fraud this morning, so it never even got to me as possibly genuine. I feel I missed out.

As for The New York Times and 'truth'. It's no coincidence that the traditional media trumpeted by the Times and by Glenn Greenwald's soon-to-be colleague at The Guardian are so much more expensive. The sheer cost of print or television serves as a gate-keeping device to keep out us proles who haven't gone through the brain-washing at the Columbia School of Journalism or the Kennedy School of Government.

Consider the largely-forgotten epitome of Times fraud — Judith Miller. People were pointing out her lies and fabrications about the Middle East, especially about Israel and Palestine, for nearly 20 years before she was finally ditched by the paper and editors that loved her.

The traditional media is just upset that the frauds being swallowed now aren't always theirs. Or worse — that the frauds exposed are theirs. John Burns, Bill Keller, Thomas Friedman, Walter Isaacson, and their ilk hate being caught out in lies. It's embarrassing when they go to the parties in the Hamptons or on Martha's Vineyard thrown by the people who paid for the lying.

Another Great Example of How Economics 'Reporting' Works

Yesterday the big economics news was that home prices were up in May. Today the big news is that first-time unemployment claims are up above what was expected.

Yesterday, the good news was universally hailed as a sign of more good news to come: a 'trough' has been reached, the drop in home prices has bottomed out, etc.

Today, the bad news on jobs is just an 'aberration': "Proper accounting of seasonal factors would explain away this unexpected increase in unemployment." (Note that everyone expected some kind of increase in jobless numbers, just not by this much.) NPR, for example, emphasizes that "the trend is down" in numbers of first-time unemployment claims (again, not down in overall numbers of unemployed).

Some have pointed out that there are seasonal variations in home prices. Easier to look in warm weather, properties look more appealing, problems like heating, are less apparent, more people are moving (students, families with kids out of school for the summer). Curiously, this was not immediately or prominently offered as a caveat with regard to the 'good news' about home prices.

Contrary to what some assert, the media does indeed get to pick and choose its facts. The excuse is "editorial necessity" or "experts tell us". The same editorial necessities and expert advice that guided reporting on Iraq, the entire Middle East, and of course, the economy.

Journalists and Professional Liars

Excellent 2007 talk by John Pilger — a journalist strictly excluded from the pages of The New York Times, the airwaves of CNN or NPR.

Excellent Essay from Glenn Greenwald

The corruption of the cocoon

Many politicians, journalists and pundits simply ignore all criticisms and avoid critics -- because there is no real price to pay from doing so.

Glenn Greenwald

Feb. 27, 2009 |

(updated below - Update II)

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder writes (h/t Andrew Sullivan):

Get Out Of Your D$*#( Shells

Here's a simple way to increase intellectual cross-pollination on the web: honest bloggers of the left and the right should try to interview at least one author/historian/politician from the other side of the aisle at least one a month. So -- Media Matters shouldn't just criticize Bernard Goldberg; they should interview him. Glenn Greenwald should, I don't know, see if Jack Goldsmith from Harvard would chat with him online. Bill Kristol should interview Jane Mayer. Pajamas Media needs to interview Democrats and Democratic experts, and not just each other, or Joe the Plumber, or Sen. Jim DeMint. Righties interviewing righties has gotten so boring and repetitive; lefties fawning over lefties is lazy. Who's going to be brave enough to reach out to an ideological or intellectual opponent, promote their new book, or interview them?

I agree with this almost entirely, but there's an assumption here that isn't quite accurate: the lack of such interviews and debates isn't evidence that there are no such attempts being made. To the contrary: not only politicians, but a huge portion of pundits and journalists, simply refuse to acknowledge any criticisms, let alone engage critics.

Our political discourse is so stratified that politicians and pundits can get all the exposure they want while confining themselves to hospitable venues and only speaking to sympathetic journalists. That, as but one example, is what fuels "access journalism" -- the willingness of politicians to speak only to deferential reporters, who stay deferential in order to ensure that those politicians continue to speak with them, a process that perpetuates itself ad infnitum. That has created a virtually complete -- and quite destructive -- accountability-free zone where politicians and pundits alike can simply avoid any form of adversarial questioning or challenges to their claims [in fact, ironically enough, one of my criticisms of Ambinder during the recent State Secrets controversy was that, when defending the Obama administration's position as conveyed by anonymous DOJ officials (whose anonymity prevented them from being questioned or otherwise engaged), he failed to speak with or even cite anyone who had an opposing view].

Last week, Rachel Maddow interviewed GOP Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty rather aggressively about what she perceived to be the contradiction between his opposition to the stimulus bill and his willingness to accept the monies appropriated by that bill on behalf of his state. Unlike Keith Olbermann, Maddow clearly has a desire to conduct adversarial interviews with those with whom she disagrees (as many Democratic politicians who do her show, likely expecting a friendly venue but receiving the opposite, can attest). But this is what she said at the end of the Pawlenty interview:

Governor Pawlenty represents Minnesota and I will just say -- we ask a lot of Republicans to be on the show and they almost always say no. So, I am particularly grateful whenever anybody says yes. And to any Republicans out there who we ask -- see -- I'm not so bad.

With very few exceptions, Republicans simply won't talk to her. Identically, in 2007, when Bill Moyers produced the first major television report about the media's failures and deceit in the run-up to the Iraq War, he attempted to interview most of the key figures whose actions he intended to highlight and critique -- such as Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, William Safire, Tom Friedman and Roger Ailes. But here's what happened when he tried:

MOYERS: We wanted to talk to some others in the media about their role in the run up to the war. . . . . Judith Miller, who left the Times after becoming embroiled in a White House leak scandal, declined our request on legal grounds.

The Times liberal hawk Thomas Friedman also said no. So did Bill Safire, who had predicted Iraq would now be leading the Arab World to democracy. . . .

The Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer also turned us down. So did Roger Ailes, the man in charge of Fox News. He declined, an assistant told us, because he's writing ab ook on how Fox has changed the face of American broadcasting and doesn't want to scoop himself.

William Kristol led the march to Baghdad behind a battery of Washington microphones. He has not responded to any of our requests for an interview, but he still shows up on TV as an expert, most often on Fox News.

The only targets of Moyers' critique willing to speak with him and address criticisms of their pre-war behavior were (to their credit) Tim Russert and Peter Beinart, who sat and rather uncomfortably addressed Moyers' probing, adversarial examination. But most of the super tough-guy civilization-warriors refused to answer for what they said, instead cowardly hiding behind their challenge-free monologue-columns and/or friendly colleagues at Fox News.

The original impetus for the creation of my Salon Radio show last July was that I wanted to have a forum to question and hear from any political figures, journalists and pundits who were the target of criticisms here. As I wrote when announcing the debut of that show:

Although the podcast show will function as a stand-alone entity, my intent is that it will supplement much of what I write about by enabling me to interview, debate or otherwise engage with people on issues that relate to what I write about. I intend to make it a regular practice to invite onto the show anyone who is criticized here -- journalists, political figures or anyone else -- in order to discuss and debate those critiques.

What I quickly found, however, is that such offers were almost always rebuffed or ignored, to the point where I mostly stopped trying, assuming that it would be futile. Having accountability-free discourse means that many political figures and journalists perceive no benefit -- and certainly no obligation -- to acknowledge critics or confront criticisms.

* * * * *

People who want to opine politically or otherwise have an influence on the political process have -- in my view -- an obligation to engage criticisms. That's the reason I do things such as spend 45 minutes on the Hugh Hewitt Show defending my views on Israel-Gaza and foreign policy generally, going on Fox News to explain objections to John Brennan, debating someone like Cass Sunstein on his excreable opposition to investigations of Bush officials or someone like David Rivkin on his defense of warrantless eavesdropping, or engaging in online discussions with people (such as Megan McArdle, Ben Smith and Ana Marie Cox) with whom I've had sharp disagreements. That's why I virtually always post complaints and responses from those whom I criticize. Speakers at Cato Institute events, as a matter of policy, almost always have someone included in the event to criticize the speaker's views [as I did when I presented Tragic Legacy there, after which former Reagan DOJ official Lee Casey rather harshly critiqued my book, and will have again at an upcoming (soon-to-be-announced) Cato presentation I'm making in early April].

Sometimes these sorts of clashes are unpleasant. Sometimes, due to the people involved or other factors, they are not constructive. But often they are (as but one example, I unexpectedly found my discussion with Hewitt to be quite substantive and weirdly respectful). And, in all events, doing these things is something which, if one wants to spout political opinions in public, one should feel compelled to do [and, to be meaningful, the obligation extends beyond pseudo-debates between such mutually admiring friends (and like-minded comrades) that the bubbly lovefest precludes any serious clashes].

More importantly, it's precisely the ability of politicians, journalists and pundits to avoid meaningful challenges to their views that, more than any other factor, degrades our political discourse. The reason the Wall St. Journal Editors (and others like them) disseminate blatant falsehoods and then never bother to correct or even acknowledge those errors -- and the reason people like Karl Rove can spout the most intellecutally dishonest columns imaginable -- is precisely because they know they can just avoid any venues where they will be questioned or challenged about what they say. Those who insulate themselves from critics and just ignore all criticisms, and who speak only to hospitable audiences, know that they can say anything without consequence or accountability (just compare the cowardly Bill Kristol's humiliating history of deceit and error-plagued punditry to his endless promotions within our media establishment).

In fact, it is this exact dynamic that makes the absence of adversarial journalism -- and the dominance of access journalism -- so destructive. Bush officials were able to spend eight years spewing the most blatant falsehoods because they knew that most journalists wouldn't challenge them or even point out the falsity of their claims. Bush spent eight years almost exclusively speaking to adoring, pre-screened audiences where he heard no challenges to what he asserted. And, in general, it's hard to overstate how severely the cocooning process can distort reality (see here and here for a couple recent, typical examples).

Adversarial challenges to one's statements are a vital check on errors and deceit. Clashes of ideas are an irreplaceable instrument for truth-finding. Shielding oneself from such challenges (or just ignoring them) is not only irresponsible and cowardly, but ensures that one can opine without accountability. That's why bloggers who have an active, smart and critical comment section with which they interact have a major advantage over journalists who hide from critical scrutiny. In all of this, it's reasonable to exercise some discretion -- not all criticisms and/or critics merit attention -- but those who avoid any real challenges to their statements (whether politicians, journalists, or pundits) ought to be stigmatized for doing so, and it ought to be viewed as a powerful indictment against their credibility (Ambinder's post will prompt me to resume efforts to invite onto Salon Radio those who are criticized here and to make note of those who refuse).

* * * * *

What Ambinder describes as this self-imposed cocooning process is now so pervasive that it has actually become the norm, at least in many precincts. During those few occasions when I have been able to interview those whose views I've criticized, my comment section and inbox were filled with warnings that aggressively adversarial interviews should be avoided because it will lead most potential interviewees to refuse future requests. Criticisms of TV journalists who conduct painfully sycophantic, unchallenging interviews with powerful political figures will inevitably prompt defenses that the journalist can't be more adversarial because to do so will ensure that nobody will submit to future interviews. Just as people have been trained to believe that there is something inherently illegitimate about primary challenges to incumbent politicians (it's an undemocratic purge! a circular firing-squad!), so, too, have many people been trained to believe that the ability of politicians and other opinion-makers to shield themselves from any real critical examination is both understandable and even necessary. And thus, there is no real price to pay for those who hide from it.

Until those who suffer a serious loss of credibility from speaking only in hospitable venues and to access-eager journalists -- and until there is a real price to pay for simply ignoring criticisms and even documentation of factual errors -- these practices will almost certainly continue. Ambinder raised an important point here. It's a good suggestion. But it's likely to fall on deaf ears without there being some real incentive for people to change this cocooning behavior.

UPDATE: A few illustrative examples underscore the point here. During her tenure at Time, Ana Marie Cox, to her credit, normalized the idea that Time's reporters and columnists should not only blog, but also regularly engage blogger criticism and interact extensively with their commenters. It's hard to dispute that their subjecting themselves to that sort of two-way interaction has expanded their perspectives and altered their journalistic behavior for the better (see this post from Joe Klein today as just one of many examples; this admission of error from Jay Carney was also a classic example).

By stark contrast, some of the absolute worst "journalists" plaguing the country -- Fred Hiatt, Tom Friedman, David Ignatius, Maureen Dowd, Nedra Pickler -- are also some of the most extensively criticized. Despite their undoubtedly being well aware of that criticism (after all, it prominently appears right on the first and second pages of a Google search of their names), they simply ignore it, never deign even to acknowledge it, and thus just continue unmolested with their dishonest and pernicious behavior, too insular even to respond to widespread critiques of what they do.

UPDATE II: Slate's Dahlia Lithwick wrote a column in 2007 relating to many of these themes that -- without my endorsing all of it -- is worth reading.

On an unrelated note, I spoke to the annual conference of the ACLU of Massachusetts last month regarding impediments to the restoration of civil liberties under the Obama administration. That 30-minute speech, for those interested, can be heard on MP3 here. It's also available on ITunes here (the video of the speech may or may not be posted at some point in the future).

-- Glenn Greenwald

The Myth of the Virtuous Middle

It is more accurately called 'The Middle' — with scare quotes. If "it's all relative" holds any substance in popular discourse, it is in the relativism of what counts as "the middle". This should be obvious and probably is, but "the virtue of the middle" does work for those in that 'virtuous' position — it provides a fig leaf behind which they can hide — and so the myth goes unexamined.

So let's examine a case: The New York Times on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Times, like NPR and CNN and many others, are fond of saying that they are criticized "by both sides". Conclusion? "Since both side are criticizing us, we must be doing something right."

Possibly. Or one side might be right and the other wrong. In the case of the Israeli occupation, major supporters of Israel are convinced that the Times is too critical of Israel. At NPR, to cite a similar case, former ombudsman (equivalent to the Times's "Public Editor") Jeffrey Dvorkin expressly stated that he felt NPR's coverage tended to favor the Palestinian side.

How?

• "Israel has done some not very nice things." I heard these words first from Elie Wiesel. Quite a move for him. He had and has typically exonerated Israel of any wrongdoing of any kind or degree. I later heard precisely the same words from Brian Lehrer of WNYC and Daniel Schorr of NPR. Quite a coincidence. This is as close as you will ever hear any prominent media personality get to actually criticizing, much less condemning, Israeli atrocities.
  The prevailing view of the US and Israel is that neither is capable of committing war crimes. So it is some indication of just how awful things are in Gaza that The New York Times, NPR, etc., can even mention that elsewhere in the world people are calling for prosecution of Israeli war crimes. The worst you will typically hear said about Israeli actions is something to the effect that they are "counterproductive" or "not in Israel's best interests".
  Rarely will you hear mention of "Palestinian rights". So, for example, a January 16th Times editorial stated, "the assault on Gaza has passed the point of diminishing returns." As strong a condemnation of Israeli action as you will ever find in a Times editorial. There, it must be said, a handful of prominent, mainstream American figures who have criticized Israel more harshly. The most notable, of course, is Jimmy Carter, who was rhetorically drawn and quartered for his transgression. Years ago Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes wrote a critical column, as did the former Times legal commentator, Anthony Lewis.

• White Phosphorus [reported by FAIR]. Here is the Times on March 22, 1995:

"[S]ome of the worst chemical weapons were never excluded by any international agreement.

"White phosphorus, for example, is considered to be an incendiary weapon, not a chemical weapon, and under the ambiguous rules of war is acceptable for military use, both for creating smoke screens and for starting fires. But this waxy substance adheres to flesh, and when it is exposed to air, it bursts into flame. The seven allied bombing raids that leveled the German city of Hamburg in July and August 1943 started a firestorm with white phosphorus. Many of the city's phosphorus-smeared residents sought refuge in Hamburg's two lakes, but when they stepped out of the water the phosphorus on their bodies reignited. Some were shot by German troops to end their suffering. Hamburg suffered more than 50,000 killed, many of them victims of white phosphorus. . . .

"Some deadly poisons are not considered weapons at all, yet they have been used to kill and terrorize, and may be used again."

BUT today, the Times takes quite a different tone on white phosphorus [again, as noted by FAIR]:

"White phosphorus is a standard, legal weapon in armies, long used as a way to light up an area or to create a thick white smoke screen to obscure troop movements. While using it against civilians, or in an area where many civilians are likely to be affected, can be a violation of international law, Israel has denied using the substance improperly. On Wednesday, Hamas fired a phosphorus mortar shell into Israel, but no one was hurt.

• Whose word is heard. Because Israel has barred journalists from Gaza, we are hearing from even fewer Palestinians than we normally would. It was already a staple of US coverage that many more Israelis are typically interviewed "on the street" than Palestinians.
  

• Whose dead count. Until the Palestinian death total really soared, the Times and other US media groups were treating fatalities on a 1-to-1 basis, this despite the fact that Palestinian losses greatly exceeded Israeli losses from the very first day. Over the decades of the occupation, the probability that an Israeli fatality goes reported has been vastly greater than the probability that a Palestinian one does. The usual fig leaf here? Newsworthiness. (A sobering, presumably unintentional, admission.)
  

• Suffering. The conditions in the territories are routinely described incompletely or not at all. Those who insist on raising the issue of Palestinian suffering will often find themselves accused of playing the "blame game" or of unfairly claiming that "our suffering is greater than yours." The catch? Palestinians are suffering more. Simple fact.
  

• The buddy system. Leading reporters for the Times and others live in Israel, not the territories, never the territories. Mere association would understandably foster sympathy for those associated with. Israel further fosters this with an exceptionally competent media management, spin control, manipulation system.
  

• Prominent critics of Israeli behavior are downplayed or dismissed. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu have both described conditions in the territories as apartheid, both have been largely ignored. When President Jimmy Carter condemned Israel behavior, the Times did hatchet job on him, citing the notoriously pro-Israel Alan Dershowitz (without any mention at all of Dershowitz's record on the subject.).

• Israel operates a small army of spin controllers (including "historian" Michael Oren) whose job it is to "guide" western coverage.

• If the Times (or NPR's or CNN's) coverage is consistently pro-Palestinian, how is it that most Americans are not even aware that Israel occupies the Palestinian territories. (Yes, a fact borne out by at least two studies.)

Not conclusive, but I'm only getting started.

MediaLens.org currently has a great piece surveying British coverage of the Gaza attacks with the Serbian attacks on Kosovo in the 1990s.

In '99 Europe and North America rallied to condemn Serbian attacks. Indeed, Serbia was charged with genocide and since then several Serbian figures have been brought to trial in the Hague. Kosovo did attack Serbian forces and in some cases civilians. But this did not stop the charges against Serbia. Casualties rates among Kosovars were then what Palestinian casualty rates are now approaching. And Kosovo had not suffered months of crippling blockades and years of occupation and land theft.

Now, however, nothing comparable to the charges leveled against Serbia is being leveled against Israel.

There was no privileged "middle" in the Serbian-Kosovan conflict. But here there is.

The middle is not the privileged position of "Truth". It is the fig leaf for wrongdoing. For political reasons, among others, neither the US nor Europe will charge Israel with the crimes is unambiguously committing. So, assert the "Virtue of the Middle", assert — tacitly — the equal moral status of the two sides (while arming and funding one and often explicitly asserting the moral superiority of that one) to avoid a costly admission regarding the crimes of the client.


REFERENCES

"Here Comes Kosovo." Roger Cohen. The New York Times. February 14, 2008

[more to come]

Glenn Greenwald Skewers Washington Post 'Ombudsman'

These days many major news organizations have an 'Ombudsman'. 'The World's Greatest Newspaper' has the Public Editor. These people are little more than fronts. On rare occasions they offer substantive criticism of news coverage, but even then it's typically a Mike Myers style "oops" with a delicate finger to the lips. (If you remember who Mike Myers is.)

That is, the ombudsman (or 'Public Editor'), is not a representative of the public, but rather the representative, the defender, the champion, of the paper or station in the face of public criticism. When the news organization's privates are too exposed, the ombudsman handles the fig leaf.

So the Times, long after its revolting coverage of Iraq and Bush via the accomplished bigot and liar Judith Miller, finally offered a "maybe we could have done things differently". Miller's lies had been repeatedly laid bare for almost 20 years, but it took glaring, frontpage coverage of outright falsification to finally damn her. Her cohort, Michael Gordon, is still lying with stunning arrogance on a regular basis. Pulitzer Prize winners John Burns, Thomas Friedman, and others offer marginally more respectable garbage to much official acclaim.

At NPR, Jeffrey Dvorkin was a routine apologist for NPR's atrocious coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, particularly of Linda Gradstein. He even went so far as to say (in a non-NPR forum) that he thought NPR's coverage was too pro-Palestinian.

Deborah Howell is the official shit-shoveler at the Washington Post. Salon's Glenn Greenwald vivisects the spineless creature in a current essay.

Despite the still-growing national and international consensus that George W. Bush is likely the worst President in American history (and probably the worst leader of the last 100 years among the industrialized democracies), Howell claims, as Greenwald reports incredulously,

that one reason that The Post and other papers are losing money is because they are "too liberal"; have had "more favorable stories about Barack Obama than John McCain," and "conservatives are right that they often don't see their views reflected enough in the news pages." To mitigate newspapers' financial problems, Howell decrees: "the imbalance still needs to be corrected." She adds: "Neither the hard-core right nor left will ever be satisfied by Post coverage -- and that's as it should be."

What if the actual facts -- i.e., "reality" -- are consistent with the views of "the hard-core left" and contrary to the views of the "hard-core right"? What if, as has plainly been the case, the conservatives' views are wrong, false, inaccurate? What if the McCain campaign was failing and relying on pure falsehoods and sleazy attacks, and The Post's coverage simply reflected that reality? It doesn't matter. In order to sell more newspapers, according to Howell, The Post's news coverage must shape itself to the Right and ensure that "their views [are] reflected enough in the news pages" (I don't recall Howell complaining when her newspaper -- according to its own media critic -- systematically suppressed anti-war viewpoints in its news pages and loudly amplified pro-Bush and pro-war views).

In Howell's view, The Post shouldn't determine its news reporting based on what is factually true. Instead, it should shape its coverage to please this discredited, failed political movement -- in order to sell more papers. That corrupt formula is, of course, what is now meant by "journalistic balance" -- say what both sides believe and take no position about what is true -- and it is precisely that behavior which propped up this incomparably failed and deceitful presidency for so long. The establishment media bears much of the responsibility for what has happened during the last 8 years, and amazingly enough, the lesson many of them seemed to have learned is that they didn't go far enough ("we're too liberal; we need to accommodate the Right more"). If there is an Obama presidency, watch for them very quickly to re-discover the long-dormant concept of "adversarial behavior."

NPR — National Plutocrat Radio

Where is the public in National Public Radio? In the past 20 years or so, it has steadily ceased to be what it promised at the time of its founding (if it ever was that to begin with).

Coverage of the Middle East, the US government and especially its foreign policy, and virtually any topic that requires more than a generic bachelors degree in some gut subject goes woefully under-reported. The most notable individual cases coming immediately to mind are Nina Totenberg's glaring failure to follow up after she broke the Anita Hill challenge to Clarence Thomas in 1991 and the consistently biased reporting from Israel/Palestine of Linda Gradstein, who was found to have accepted payment from pro-Israel organizations in violation of NPR's own published standards.

NPR's coverage of the first Gulf War and now of the Iraq War was almost devoid of anything that would pass for journalistic scrutiny. Now its coverage of the Wall Street chaos is matching that low.

In the case of Wall Street we should perhaps expect this. Among NPR's Board of Directors are several with degrees from Harvard, Chicago, Yale — institutions well-represented on Wall Street and in recent administrations — but more importantly, institutions that lead the US in encouraging and unquestioning acceptance of and obedience to "authority". Scroll to the end of this entry for a brief rundown of some of the behind-the-scenes automatons at NPR.

Below is an expanded version of a letter sent to NPR regarding its October 22nd interview with former SEC chair William Donaldson:

NPR continues its grossly inadequate, essentially conservative, reporting on the financial crisis with its October 22nd interview of William Donaldson.

Absent from NPR's interview is any mention that Donaldson was Chairman of the SEC during a crucial period of deregulation. Donaldson’s comments about deregulation are hardly those of a disinterested "expert". Like Robert Rubin and others, he now has a vested interest in protecting his own reputation (and now doubt his considerable personal wealth).

Indeed, Donaldson, like the rest of the SEC, uniformly advocated deregulation. In April 2004, the SEC released firms like Goldman Sachs (then lead by Henry Paulson) from the "net capital rule" which required them to hold in reserve capital, effectively limiting their borrowing. This was a crucial step in the lead-up to the current chaos.

Donaldson is quite wrong when he describes the US as the "gold standard" on deregulation. The Europeans -- on a number of fronts, not just financial -- have advocated greater regulation to protect average people (as opposed to protecting the wealthy or priviledged) and out of what many might say is an interpretation of democratic principles which surpasses that of the nation that calls itself the “world’s greatest democracy”.

As for the specific claim that better (meaning, more lax) US regulation made the US more attractive to investors globally: Of course the US was more attractive when it was easier to make a quick buck here. How attractive is the US now?

It is genuinely astonishing, and shameful, that NPR fails utterly to question Donaldson on exactly those points where he has a personal axe to grind. NPR brings out NONE of Donaldson's personal record, none of the points on which his personal record is relevant. Surely an awareness of his own involvement would influence listeners' willingness to take another Wall Street snake-oil salesman at his word.

This is entirely in keeping with NPR's reporting which has largely failed to investigate or scrutinize either the Wall Street failures or the government and business claims about them.

One telling characteristic of interviews like today’s is that NPR (and many other American news businesses) abandon the “he said/she said” approach which will be found in discussions of, say, evolution vs. “intelligent design”. There are many flaws in that approach, but on topics like that addressed by Donaldson, that approach might serve quite well. But of course, it might also serve to undermine the line that Donaldson is taking, a line that NPR has bought into over weeks of reporting.

Here's a rundown of some of NPR's board members:

• Kevin Klose, President of NPR - B.A. Harvard
• Antoine W. van Agtmael, Chair of NPR Foundation - M.A. Yale, M.B.A. NYU Stern
• John A. Herrmann Jr., Vice Chairman of Lincoln International, former Managing Director in the M&A practice at JP Morgan Securities - B.A. Yale, M.B.A. Harvard
• Lyle Logan, Executive Vice President, The Northern Trust Company - M.B.A. Chicago
• Howard H. Stevenson, Baker Foundation Professor and the Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus at Harvard Business School

These are people (and granted, there are more people at NPR) who share, with the exception of Klose, one key characteristic — a lust for money and a degree from one of the indoctrinating institutions of money. They all share an education in institutions which today show little evidence of encouraging critical analysis but rather encourage mindless obedience while at the same time encouraging their students to believe in their own innate superiority.