Between February and April of this year David Croteau of Virginia Commonwealth University conducted a survey of Washington, D.C. based journalists. His report on that survey is on the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) website: http://www.fair.org/reports/journalist-survey.html The results of two questions (below) neatly sum up the findings: economic conditions looked pretty good to reporters making a lot of money. I wonder if there was any correlation between the 31% of journalists with household incomes over $150,000 and the 34% who rated economic conditions as excellent? Similarly, 58% thought economic conditions were good and 64% had household incomes between $50,000 and $149,999 a year. Questions About Journalists' Assessment of Economic Policy Issues 9. First, how would you rate economic conditions in this country today? 34% Excellent 58% Good 4% Fair 1% Poor 2% Don't know/not sure 24. For classification purposes, into which of the following ranges does your annual household income fall? 5% under $50,000 27% $50,000 - $74,999 16% $75,000 - $99,999 21% $100,000 - $149,999 17% $150,000 - $199,999 14% $200,000 or more It would be fun to ask those folks a couple of follow up questions: 1. How do you rate economic conditions _now_? 2. Have you lost any money in the market this year? Back in the 1970s, Habermas wrote of the displacement of crisis tendencies in advanced capitalism -- from economic crisis to rationality crisis, legitimation crisis and motivation crisis. Here's a great quote from the book, _Legitimation Crisis_: "If governmental crisis management fails, it lags behind programmatic demands *that it has placed on itself* [emphasis in original]. The penalty for this failure is withdrawal of legitimation. Thus, the scope for action contracts precisely at those moments in which it needs to be drastically expanded." On the back cover of my Beacon Paperback edition is the following blurb from Jeremy J. Shapiro: "Shall we sit back and watch our social system crumble on the TV screen? Or can we step out of our private views and interests, figure out what is objectively good for the human species, and act on it?" The responses of reporters in the above survey exemplify the view that private interests *equal* public good. The term 'conflict of interest' seems quaint in juxtaposition with the motivations celebrated by free market ideology. It seem to me that what we have been seeing over the past year and a half is not "economic crisis" but the rapid and _irreversible_ displacement of economic problems into legitimation crises. Underlying this almost instantaneous decay of the system has been the slow erosion of morally defensible (traditionalist) structures of individual motivations. As Habermas argued, "Bourgeois culture as a whole was never able to reproduce itself from itself. It was always dependent on motivationally effective supplementation by traditional world views." There is no economic fix to the current crisis simply because it is NOT an economic crisis. THIS is the second shoe. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
