We like to say that we have freedom of the press in the United States. While this is true in terms of government regulation, in the commercial realm this is not really the case.
Here’s the thing: if you want to be published, you are limited in what you can publish, because you can only really publish (that is to say, sell) information that people want to read. If a newspaper was full of information that was of no interest to you, you would not buy it. And of course advertisers would not support it if no one read it. So yes, you can write or say pretty much anything you want, but if you want to make any money writing, and you want to have the power and influence that comes from many people reading your writing, then you have to write things that people want to read. This is why no agent, publisher, or Oprah has ever shown any interest in my book project “You’re Fat, Ugly, and Stupid, and It’s Your Fault.”
The problem is, like the faux title above, there are certain kinds of very true unpleasant thoughts, that most people just don’t want to hear. Just one example, lots of people knew that there were Catholic priests doing naughty things with the choir boys, but no one wanted to be the one to blow the whistle. After our finally discovering that such things went on for years, we always wonder why no one spoke out sooner. But when such things are going on in the here and now, and if you are a lone individual facing a massive institution, the immediate reflex is to not say anything and just hope it will go away. No one wanted to discuss or hear this information, too many people were economically or otherwise connected to this oh so large institution, and that is one of the reasons why it went unreported for so long.
The 2008 financial situation was caused by something similar; so many people were making so much money, and everyone had so much to gain from a market going eternally up, that no one wanted to say anything about questionable practices. People who did speak up were ignored.
So that leaves me wondering, what else is going on– right now– that no one is saying anything about? What whistle blower is being ignored today?
From my own unique vantage point I am completely cognizant of things going on in large institutions in the here and now which, to my mind, are not literally illegal but sure strike me as being somewhat immoral. I have the “freedom”– sort of– to comment on these things, but in doing so I risk losing major amounts of business, as these large institutions have a lot of economic power and so are all potential big customers. Am I willing to risk losing all that business, when there is the hope that someone else will talk about it? It is so much more convenient to just sit here and hope it will all go away if I just ignore it, or hope that someone else does it.
It’s hard to create enthusiasm about bad news, unless I have someone to blame for something bad that has already happened to you.
Well, history is full of examples of this going on, so add me to the list. So yes, the press has freedom, but the press is very selective in what it prints because it needs to sell advertising, and bad news about cherished institutions is bad for business, and that’s why you won’t hear it until it’s too late. Whenever I question a common practice in American society I open myself up personally to not-fun-to-read challenging comments. I don’t get paid for writing this blog, so I sometimes wonder why I create an environment where people feel like it’s ok to dump on me if they like the status quo I am criticizing. It’s easier to just be funny and have everyone like me and not rock the boat.
However, here is some eternally bad new anyway, and it was on PBS this week so I’ll glom on.
I remember putting links in my website to the national debt clock 20 years ago, and it made little impact (I thought 5 trillion dollars was a lot of money back then). At the risk of making you never want to read this blog again, here is some very true but unpleasant press: the current annual interest payments on the national debt are (I am guessing) something like 500 billion dollars a year. It may be easier to think of that as 70 million dollars an hour. Over the past 10 years that has been adding up to 5 trillion tax dollars paid out that did nothing for us. Also, your share of that interest is about $2,000 a year, which we each pay to wealthy investors on their risk-free investment in the USA. Your share of the debt itself is about $65,000– up from 35,000 in 2009 when I first wrote this essay.
