Non-coverage of forbidden areas by the newspress is explained then, by three factors: (1) the power of the dominant participants to legally exclude the newspress; (2) the newspress' financial interest in not undermining advertising revenue; and (3) the newspress' acceptance of both the pre-eminence of the paramount interests justifying non-coverage and the incompatibility of those interest with coverage. What coverage of forbidden areas there is requires espionage and betrayal. But it should not be surprising that the newspress is required to resort to these methods to pierce the pervasive and doctrinal secrecy surrounding consequential governmental and corporate activities; in such cases, the ends define the means.
Credibility in Crisis? If the resiliency of American politics reflects a capacity to define issues having structural causes by construing them as questions of personalities, the Pentagon Papers and Watergate cases are perfect examples of the process at work. The villains of both pieces have been almost universally identified as particular politicians who lied, rather than a secrecy system that makes such lying inevitable because profitable. So reform assumes the character of a "post-Watergate mentality", and a new President declares "I will never lie to you."
"Credibility," of course, is a personal trait; and the credibility gap is simply the most recent and egregious testament to the enduring strength of the myth of the open society. Since all lies, except those referring to states of mind, are predicated upon objectively discernable differences in information, the credibility gap has always rested upon "information gaps."
Much else also rests thereupon.
Footnotes
1. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York, 1974), p 119. Italics in the original. Braverman also writes: "A comprehensive and detailed outline of the principles of (Scientific Management) is essential. . .because. . .(they are). . .nothing less than the explicit verbalization of the capitalist mode of production." Ibid., p 86.
2. "Free market" capitalism refers to the form of capitalism characterized by markets in which profits are distributed relatively free of governmental direction. ("Fascism" is the form of capitalism characterized by governmentally mandated profit distribution. "Free market" and "fascist" capitalism are end points on a spectrum, of course, to which no existing capitalist system fully corresponds.)
3. A not insubstantial fraction of the redistribution of corporate profits through financial markets is random. See Lester C. Thurow, "Tax Wealth, Not Income," in The New York Times Magazine (April 11, 1973). To the extent it is not random (which is what is of interest to rational investors), the redistribution is largely determined by information differentials.
4. By means of the price mechanism in a price competitive environment, or by means of increased promotional efforts otherwise, profits are redistributed from corporations which have not adopted improved production techniques to corporations which have.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
