DC Reporting : Myths, Fabrications & Whitewash

DC Reporting : Myths, Fabrications & Whitewash
When creating D.C. myths, Washington reporters aren't interested in actual
data.

I was reading _this_
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123992058646826949.html) [link fixed], the zillionth "analysis" of political populism from a
Washington, D.C.-based reporter, when I came upon this pretty perfect example
of how Beltway journalists just make shit up:

The country today is different. America has an enormous middle class that
is heavily invested in the financial system and is hardly about to organize
for its overthrow...
People who have lost half the value of their 401(k) plans, in other words,
want to regain it by having the economy rebound, not by seizing the assets
of ExxonMobil Corp.

If this reporter was even the slightest bit interested in whether this
banalia was true, he would have spent all of 5 seconds on the Google and found
that actually, empirical public opinion data shows that Americans are quite
supportive of "seizing the assets" of oil companies like ExxonMobil.

As _USA Today_
(http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-07-31-energy--poll_N.htm) reported a few months ago, a windfall profits tax -
ie. a tax to seize oil company assets - is wildly popular, according to
its surveys. This was the_same finding as ABC News' earlier poll
(http://www.pollingreport.com/energy.htm) . Indeed, even the conservative-leaning
_Rasmussen_
(http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/gas_oil/just_47_oppose_nationalizing_oil_industry)

found that just 47 percent of
Americans oppose complete and total nationalization of the entire oil industry.
But, you see, when creating D.C. myths - in this case, the myth that
Americans celebrate being ruled by corporate special interests, want no change,
are completely happy with the status quo, and love oil companies -
Washington reporters aren't interested in actual data. They live in a world of
six-figures and lobbyists and cocktail parties - a cloistered gated community
whose residents are nauseated by the idea of "seizing assets" of the
wealthiest corporations in the world. And so these reporters assume the consensus
of that gated community is the consensus of the majority of Americans who
live outside that gated community - even when the hard data says exactly the
opposite.

I wonder if instead of working in the factual world, I should just start
making shit up. It would save me so much time in my work to not have to, ya
know, verify anything. I could write entire columns just saying the first
piece of conventional wisdom that came into my mind, without even bothering
to see if it was true. Wow...what an easy life that would be.