I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
It’s July 4. What say we in the news biz celebrate by declaring our independence of automatic, unthinking, oversimplified words and phrases?
Newspapers, radio, TV and Web practitioners should let their keyboards cool and bite their tongues before employing, for example, “free market.”
If, as commonly defined, the free market is business governed by the laws of supply and demand, not restrained by government interference, regulation or subsidy, how many businesses (excluding mom-and-pops) fit that description?
And, given its dependence on government, how much of our economy is free market? The current energy debate, after all, centers on what we should subsidize – oil, gas, coal, nuclear, bio fuels, wind, solar, geothermal and such – and to what extent.
Here in New Mexico, the Job Training Incentive Program recently granted some $2.68 million of tax money to train 420 new employees at businesses around the state. And local organizations fostering technological ventures are themselves supported by federal outlays. Subsidizing job training and high tech ventures may make sense, but saying they exist in a “free market” is senseless.
“Free trade” will have to go, too, mostly, because it isn’t free if it is subsidized, which is true of many U.S. exporters. Nor would it hurt if those who write about “free trade” explain how dealing with a mercantilist partner benefits us. (Think China.)
Editors who join my Independence Day revolt against oversimplification should also kick the habit of framing issues as “either-or.” News flash: opponents of “free trade” are not inevitably “protectionists.”
I understand that space and time are limited and there may appear to be no alternative to substituting shorthand for a complex reality. The cost, however, is distortion of reality. Better to hold a story until there’s room for complexity.
I hope I’m right that lack of space or time explains the automatic, unthinking and oversimplified. It’s also possible, of course, that it represents a failure of journalistic skepticism. Perhaps many reporters and editors believe economics is a science. Perhaps there’s a consensus, too, that today’s operating system, a mixture of Chamber of Commerce attitudes and trendy libertarianism (like Marxism, a religion pretending to scientific rigor), makes for a just society.
But that is hard to believe, particularly on this star-spangled day. We’re celebrating, after all, our emergence from intellectual chains, as well as state tyranny.
Happy Independence Day!
