One of the big unreported stories amidst the horrific stupidity of the “war on terror” is how many millions of bucks the “liberal” Washington Post is making from GWBush. Back in January 2002, I published a short article on how much the Washington Post Company and its eponymous newspaper benefit financially from the Bush administration. http://hermes-press.com/education_bill.htm

 

Both as a journalist and as a Post subscriber living in the DC area, I thought and still think that the Post vouchsafed an appalling lack of scrutiny to candidate Bush, to the condition of my native Texas under his administration, to his brother the other governor, to the Bush White House, to the non-investigation of 9/11, to the “war on terror,” and to the upcoming push to invade Iraq.

 

The Washington Post Co. owns Kaplan, the standardized-testing and test-prepping conglomerate. The company’s famous newspaper is not profitable, but its educational sector is. Operating revenues for Kaplan and its subsidiaries have soared to hundreds of millions under Dubya’s strange insistence on more standardized testing for all. My column briskly summarized how much money the Post Co. stood to make from Bush’s so-called “education reforms,” suggested briefly that a transparent slogan like “education reform” should be received with enlightened skepticism by real journalists, and mentioned that the WashPost itself had not disclosed the financial windfall it was receiving via the administration. (I began phoning and emailing the Post in spring 2001, with no response from the Post. The paper ran one general article in mid-August 2001, mentioning its ownership of Kaplan in 2 sentences without mentioning amounts, presumably to torpedo my story that the “liberal” Post stood to make at least half a billion from Team Bush.)

 

The column drew favorable responses including this one from Harold Meyerson, then an editor at American Prospect magazine:

 

“Dear Margie Burns --
Barbara Sansom of the UAW e-mailed your piece to Jeff Faux of EPI (lot of 3-letter abbreviations here) who e-mailed it to me. We'd love to run it, though I'd like to work with you to flesh it out a bit.
You can reach me through this e-mail or at the phone below. If you could get back to me tomorrow, that would be lovely. If tomorrow doesn't work, Monday is fine, too.

It's a fine job of reporting, and I look forward to working with you on the piece, if you're so inclined.
       With best wishes,
        Harold Meyerson
Executive Editor
The American Prospect

[contact information]”

 

Short chronology: I got in touch with Harold; he and I spoke on the phone and emailed back and forth; and he repeatedly said he was going to publish the piece. (I still have the emails and his copy-edited draft.) I rewrote it, and he said he preferred the first version. At his request, I phoned several people on Capitol Hill and at the Post, to ask whether the Post/Co. had lobbied the ed bill, informing company reps that the article was for American Prospect.

 

Shorter chronology: Harold did not tell me that he was not going to publish the piece or that he had changed his mind. He did email me, unaccountably, that David Broder is “one of the most upright people in creation” or words to that effect. [?why?] He gave me an assistant’s email address. Finally on a Friday evening I reached him by phone; he said importantly that he was awaiting a call “from a senator” but would call me back. I told him exactly when I would be leaving the house; he did not call; I tried to reach him the following Monday morning with predictably no response.

 

Shortest chronology: While in the prolonged process of deep-sixing my article, Meyerson began having HIS articles published in the Washington Post (almost a first for him). Meyerson is now on the staff of the Washington Post.

 

Meanwhile, and more importantly, the newspaper has given an artificial respectability or neutrality to almost every horror perpetrated by Bush and the GOP Congress. The result is that the administration is now mired in a naked war of aggression, has caused the deaths of thousands of innocent people, has engaged in practices including the vilest torture, is attacking not only the Bill of Rights but the Magna Carta, is openly gunning for a global war of huge populations, and is dragging America’s name through the mud. And while writers like Meyerson were waiting until it was safe to mention some of this, I was slogging forward through it, to the public.

 

Way to fight back, guys.