Americans have known about mounting inequality and king-sized Wall Street bonuses for years. But we also had an entire genre of journalism dedicated to brushing the problem off.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
American journalists tend to treat inequality as a fact of life. But it needn't be.
Journalism was being whittled away by a Wall Street theory that profits can be maximized by minimizing the product.
I have been fortunate that publications like the 'New York Times' and 'The Wall Street Journal' have allowed me to share some of my opinions with a wider audience.
I can only speak as an American, but most journalism here isn't doing its job any more. It's about selling stuff.
Eye-popping tales of growing income inequality are hardly new. By now, nearly every American must be painfully aware of the widening pay gap between top executives and shop floor laborers; between 'Master of the Universe' financiers and pretty much everyone else.
I think it's this congenital problem with journalism that we oversell the difference we make. We make small differences.
Inequality has risen to the point that it seems to me worthwhile for the U.S. to seriously consider taking the risk of making our economy more rewarding for more of the people.
The quality of our journalism will make or break our industry, not the recession.
Perhaps the biggest problem in journalism is the cult divide between journalists and corporate owners.
Reporters now are better educated than the crowd I knew when I broke in. We still had guys shaped by Prohibition and the Depression, so the news business still had badly paid people who loved it for the life, because every day was different.
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