The excellent William Greider was among the first to warn us about the Catfood Commission, and now he's given an extraordinary interview about the corporate media's coverage of the Social Security debate, which he calls a "staggering scandal."
Below: excerpts and wee bit of analysis, because that's all that's needed. It speaks for itself.
All Greider wants from the mainstream press is an honest description of Social Security's condition. Is that too much to ask for? Apparently so.
This is a staggering scandal for the media. I have yet to see a straightforward, non-ideological, non-argumentative piece in any major paper that describes the actual condition of Social Security. The core fact is that Social Security has not contributed a dime to the deficit, but has piled up trillions in surpluses, which the government has borrowed and spent. Social Security’s surpluses have actually offset the impact of the deficit, beginning with Reagan.
Greider -- who's forgotten more about the economy than most of us will ever know -- takes a "radical" approach in his reporting. He doesn't just talk to and rely on experts, experts who, he reminds us, have failed us so dramatically in recent years.
I start with the conviction that people in every station of life are not stupid. Most people are pretty capable of forming opinions and insights of their own, based on their own experiences and what they see happening around them. They don’t get everything right but—guess what—neither do the governing elites, the economists and policy wonks who tell us what is correct thinking. The financial collapse and economic breakdown are dramatic evidence of elite failure, yet I see most media reporting still relying on the same old sources as if nothing went wrong. In a functioning democracy, what the people think would be regarded as a vital source for informing democratic debate. That is what the people lose—their seat at the table.
Greider blasts journalists for their closeness to their expert sources, who he says are - here's an interesting word choice -- "embedded" in the established way of understanding things." And perhaps counterintuitively, he says that their specialized expertise is part of the problem.
The press is dangerously over-educated itself, in that reporters have developed different kinds of expertise themselves. And that brings them closer to their sources, more motivated to write for their approval. All this technocratic expertise encourages them to take a condescending view of the people they are writing for, especially in finance and economics. If all the elite experts assume Social Security is a problem, a reporter would lose respect if he or she seriously examined the counter arguments. Frankly, most political reporters don’t have a clue about the real facts. They write about Social Security as if it were just another welfare program. They do not seem to understand the surpluses are actually the savings of American workers—the money set aside for future retirement. This is virtuous behavior—the opposite of greed or the recklessness of financial elites.
The sentence I bolded is key in Greider's estimation: Reporters fundamentally misunderstand the essence and purpose of Social Security. Lies follow.
My guess is that very few reporters understand what it is, or know that the concept of social insurance originated as a conservative idea—conserving social solidarity. It was first proposed more than one hundred years ago in Germany by Bismarck—not exactly a left-winger. Today’s critics style it as an entitlement program, and therefore reporters think that it’s like welfare. It’s not something the government gives to greedy old people. Alan Simpson has been relentless on this point. The press has picked up on Simpson’s language and made it sound like it’s a hand-out...The idea of social solidarity represents the core of our society. The belief that we’re all in this together has been trampled over in the last thirty years by conservative ideology.
Ah, solidarity: what a quaint notion. And yet it may be our only hope.
Good citizens and politicians have been sucked into believing that solidarity is not the issue. Until Americans rediscover the importance of solidarity, we’re going to be screwed up as a society. We will be trapped in brutal class conflicts and arguments over who gets more, who must be thrown over the side in the interest of business efficiency. I believe deeply most Americans do not want this dog-eat-dog brutality, but do not see much chance of changing it
We're going to need solidarity to counter the coming assault on Social Security. The Catfood Commission's proposals died once, but they'll have at least nine lives. Indeed, a bipartisan group of Senators wants to introduce them, and there are reports (neither confirmed nor denied) that President Obama may come out in favor of Social Security "reforms" in an attempt to preempt more drastic cuts.