The Gatekeepers have no clothes

How have the people who matter-- elite journalists, politicians, and academics -- the gatekeepers, messed up so badly in the last couple years?

Where to start?

One, they said unrestricted "free" trade would benefit people. We said, "No way. It'll just undermine our work and allow companies to skip out on us while still plying their junk for the same price." We were right. Now Clinton, who pushed it through ten years ago, if anyone remembers that far back, is supposedly an opponent of free trade. After the fact, and after more than 879,280 mostly high-wage manufacturing jobs have been lost, according to the Economic Policy Institute's analysis of Bureau of Labor and Census materials. Strange.

Six years ago, they, meaning everyone who matters (even the New York Times), were revving up the war wagon and rolling down the interstate (to Baghdad) with all the tin cans of internment camps, government spying, and the jailing of citizens rattling behind it. They said we needed these measures to protect us. Everyone I know, not policy experts by any means, said, "This is kind of a thin argument." Worldwide, somewhere between eight and ten millions people marched in anti-war demonstrations. No one (who mattered) cared. Judith Miller's editors stuck her on the front page. Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq war resolution, and bango, we were in. Now they regret it. A little late.

The unregulated capitalism that they trumpeted ten years back, has misfired as has their war. But some someones have made massive amounts of money while hundreds of thousands of no ones lost houses, jobs, benefits, health, and their lives.

Who is to blame? Who is accountable? Will this lead, as my professors in journalism school speculate, to a more responsible journalism, one that holds itself accountable and resists political pressure? Or is it already too deep in the quicksand of money and influence to extract itself before the Wall Street buzzards unleashed by deregulation finish picking at its bones?

If anything, it's clear to me that the last years' experiences have made good journalism, journalism that speaks for the powerless instead of the powerful, and that seeks to inform rather than entertain, all the more difficult, and all the more necessary.