So many who defend the media as it is - state that we need them to protect us from the "baddies". Here is Umair Haque's rejoinder to that:
There is relatively little profitability left in the economy outside the financial sector. Wall Street and its subsidiaries now account for over 50% of all income in America. They have done so through a series of de facto coups, as both Simon Johnson and I have referred to them.
Yet, almost no one protected the public interest. Almost no one chronicled Wall Street's excesses. Almost no one kept watch over Washington's capture. Almost no one defended the swelling ranks of the vulnerable. Those few that did were marginalized — instead of lionized — by the industry itself.
Where was the fourth estate when our political, economic, and social institutions were being systematically dismantled? What has happened to our economy parallels what Mugabe did to Zimbabwe. Was the fourth estate asleep while this happened? Like other power brokers, it was negligent — and, perhaps worse, complicit.
If newspapers had protected the public interest like they were meant to, they would be more profitable. Everyone would be better off today — including newspapers — if newspapers had chronicled this transfer of value. Yet, by failing to protect the public interest, they helped create the conditions for the transfer of value away from people who do stuff, to people who speculate on stuff.
These are the poor choices of management, who committed strategic seppuku by trading near-term profit for long-run prosperity. Newspapers are full of awesome journalists who are deeply ethical people who chose journalism exactly because they want to do meaningful stuff that matters. But newspaper management — like the management of nearly every other industry under the sun — traded tomorrow for today. And that's the problem that nichepapers — just part of a larger generation of "M" organizations — are solving....
What have the publishers of our newspapers stood up for? When will they stand up for something greater than profit?
